


Just Another Day

by Tierfal



Category: Fullmetal Alchemist - All Media Types
Genre: Canon: Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood, Drama, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Intrigue, M/M, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Romance, SO MUCH MORE BED-SHARING THAN YOU THOUGHT POSSIBLE, Sharing a Bed, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-03
Updated: 2020-07-05
Packaged: 2021-02-28 06:14:24
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 11
Words: 152,565
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22539154
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tierfal/pseuds/Tierfal
Summary: He is lungfuls of ash and char-edged smoke; he is the skeletons the fire leaves behind. Broken glass. Blood in the sand. He’s remnants, now. Fragments of the consequences. That’s all.
Relationships: Edward Elric/Roy Mustang
Comments: 309
Kudos: 1323





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [jujubee2522](https://archiveofourown.org/users/jujubee2522/gifts).



> AT LONG LAST. Thank you so much to everyone who's patiently waited for this fic while I very, very slowly got my shit together. ♥ I hope it's worth the wait!
> 
> You may thank Jujubee2522 for the premise – I wrote this for her! You may thank me for making the premise about as excruciating as I was capable of. :x
> 
> tl;dr I unintentionally wrote a fairly leisurely slow burn. I don't know whether it'll be worse if you read it all at once or wait for updates, but this sucker is going to sit there smoldering for the length of a regular person's plot-driven novel before it gets anywhere. o__o
> 
> Also, shout-out to my boy Max, who ~~told me not to give him a shout-out for this~~ turned me on to Les Friction, which ended up saving this fic's proverbial ass, because "Louder Than Words" rescued no less than 3 of the action scenes. I was considering titling the damn thing after that song, but I didn't want people to get confused with Loud and Clear, so I nabbed something else from my playlist, which you can enjoy on Spotify [here](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/4fAu8lGqlqukzphwesGh3v) if you promise not to judge me. (YOU HAVE TO PROMISE. Most of the song selections are tone- and mood-based, rather than directly related to plot events, so it doesn't really have any spoilers!)
> 
> I meant to post the whole thing in a giant rush, but because the sum total of this is 150,000 words, that was… not in the cards. :/ I'm going to try to cram it into approximately-10k chapters and update whenever I can, but I'm not quite sure how many sections there will be! The fic is long since finished (other than a lot of head-scratching edits to sort out some of the nonsense I left for myself), but there is A Lot Going On right now, so please bear with me. ♥ (Obligatory "say hi if you're going to be at Katsu 2020, since I will be there, and I may even be alive"! XD)
> 
> Importantly: **Please heed the warnings on this one!** Parts of it read like a regular ol' Tierfal romcom, but a lot of it is pretty dark. This is a fic about PTSD first and foremost. If you need a little more info/specifics about what you're in for before you dive in, please let me know. ♥ I hit the AO3 violence tag to be safe – mostly I'd say it's not any worse than canon, but a few parts of it later on are pretty borderline. Let me know if you need to know about that, too! I may have to update the tags a bit as I read back through and remember what the hell happens in this thing, but I'll try to make sure to mention any changes that I make. ♥  
>   
> 
> 
> * * *
> 
>   
>  _Yeah, it’s holding me_  
>  _Morphing me_  
>  _And forcing me to strive_  
>   
>  _To be endlessly_  
>  _Cold within_  
>  _And dreaming I’m alive_  
>   
>  – “Hysteria” – Muse –   
> 
> 
> * * *
> 
>   
> 

Admitting that the walls have started closing in would constitute surrender. He hasn’t earned the right: he hasn’t paid the debts. He can’t, and won’t ever—the scale shattered a long time ago; the hill is insurmountable; the path unfurls forever. There is no turning back, and no giving in.

It doesn’t matter. The dark is swallowing him whole. No white flag in the world would save him. No one would be able to see it if he had one to wave.

Riza slaps a file down on his desk blotter, and his breath catches in his throat and then shudders clear. Her eyebrows start to draw together, so he flashes a blindingly bright iteration of the roguish grin. She’s unlikely to forget, but it’s possible that he can convince her that it was a trick of the light or a figment of her imagination. Roy Mustang doesn’t flinch away from every unexpected sound. Why would he? He’s fine.

“Is it lottery tickets?” he asks. “No, don’t tell me—takeout menus. And a coupon. Or even just cash. It’s cash, isn’t it? You’re much too kind, Lieutenant.”

“If only, sir,” she says, but her eyes don’t linger on him before she turns on her heel and strides back out, drawing the door shut behind her, so he might have slid it past her this time.

Keeping a sufficient portion of his attention on the room instead of dedicating it to tuning out his team proves… taxing. Virtually impossible, he supposes, if he wants to try for honesty. Attempting to monitor the sounds from the spaces outside in order to anticipate any actions made in his direction precludes any sort of useful level of focus on his own work. He can’t do both. And trying is making his head hurt like _hell_.

He pushes the glasses up onto his head, only then to regret it immensely when the nose pads tangle into his hair. How did Maes ever do this? A few moments’ struggling manages to extract them, and this time he sets them down on the desk while he grinds the heels of his hands against his eyes and then massages at his temples on both sides. The ache lies deeper. There’s nothing he can do.

He should count himself lucky that he can still see the damn glasses when he’s not wearing them—that he can still read most of the form, even; the smallest print starts to fuzz up into indecipherable letter-blobs, but most of it’s distinguishable. It could be a lot worse. All of it could be a lot worse. He has nothing to complain about. There’s nothing—

The door flings open, crashing against the wall with a sound _precisely_ like a gunshot, ricocheting back and hurling Roy’s heart with it; the skittering tempo of it in his ears makes his head swim and his chest seize up tight—

“ _Don’t_ —” he starts, and it’s the way that Fuery freezes, eyes so wide that the sudden terror shows Roy his own reflection, that makes him realize that it came out as a shout.

He can’t. He _can’t_ ; he can’t—not here; he can’t—they would have given up their lives for him a thousand times; they are so much better than he deserves, and they need—

They need the person that he’d like to be. Not the one he is.

He drags a breath in and holds it for a count of three; his heart keeps pounding, but the sharp sting of his own teeth on the inside of his lip helps to ground him.

“Please,” he says, much more quietly, “don’t slam that door.”

Fuery’s fingers curl closer around the folder in his hands. He works his jaw for several seconds, and then he smiles—the expression is flat, but the gesture is charitable.

He knows. Doesn’t he? He knows, because he’s seen it, because he’s smelled it, because he’s _been_ there, because the blood-thinned mud of the trenches coats his hands no matter how many times he runs them underneath the tap. He has to know.

“Sorry, sir,” Fuery says, lightly. “I… got excited about that radio project we were talking about. I think the amplification system is really going to work.”

“Excellent,” Roy says, trying to remember what that word sounded like back when he knew how to mean it. “Show me.”

  


* * *

  


Fuery closes the door quietly once they’re finished.

Hakuro comes back through it like a freight train screaming off the rails.

Riza tried to deflect him when he blasted into the outer office, but that still left the bang of that door, the squeal of its hinges, and the start of a protest in her voice as Roy’s only warning before the disaster blew through his flimsy barrier, too.

“Exactly what is the purpose of this press release?” is apparently a question worth threatening the structural integrity of his entire office for.

“General,” Roy says, holding his voice as steady as he can, keeping his hands folded tightly and his shoulders settled low, “everything that the papers printed was approved by the Führer’s office. I’m made to understand that he edited some of it personally, a—”

Hakuro’s temper will be his downfall, which would be a more encouraging prospect if Roy didn’t have to weather its tumults until then.

The man’s hands flatten themselves on Roy’s desktop, closer to him than remotely necessary, to make sure that he gets the point as Hakuro leans in, eyes at once sharp and cold and ablaze with… jealousy, likely. That’s probably what did it.

“You’re a fraud, Mustang,” Hakuro says. “You wear the war hero title like a badge of honor and then turn around and publicly decry _everything_ we stand for, everything your subordinates went out there and died for, every—”

“With all due respect, sir,” Roy says, and perhaps he’s raised his voice higher than he should, but he can barely hear himself over the pounding of his own heartbeat in his ears, and he has to make sure the words come out right, “you weren’t there. You can’t possibly—”

“Don’t flatter yourself,” Hakuro says. “Everyone who actually earned their stars knows that the only reason you mattered—the only reason you _lasted_ —is your little party trick. Take those filthy gloves away, and you’re just some would-be provincial politician who thinks he can sweet-talk his way up to the top and take his pick of who to sleep with once he gets there.”

The pulse of Roy’s heartbeat resonates in his stomach, too—quick, flittering, feverish; his guts quiver with the beginnings of a nausea he knows he has to suppress—

He’s grateful for the glasses, sometimes. Now, for instance: he can’t make out the details of the vein bulging in Hakuro’s neck, and he can’t tell if any flecks of tirade-borne saliva have speckled the surface of his desk.

“General,” Roy says, measuring out each word, fighting every syllable to modulate the volume and the tone, “while I’m indescribably sorry to hear that you feel that way, if you have any concerns about my qualifications for my rank, you really ought to take them up with Füh—”

One of Hakuro’s hands lifts, the better to curl itself into a fist and slam itself back down on the desktop, and everything in Roy coils up, winds tight, and braces for a blow.

His head spins, and the room teeters, and he clenches his hands around each other in a desperate last-ditch effort to confirm some sort of concrete reality around himself as the echoes of a thousand gunshots riddle his brain.

“I don’t know how you got him into your pocket,” Hakuro is saying, or something like that, or something with words— “But I can _promise_ you, Mustang, that he’s the only one you’re fooling. The rest of us know a dilettante when we see one, and we recognize disrespect to what every single one of us has worked to build in this place.”

He leans forward. Roy holds his face completely still as he scrambles to gather the fragments of his willpower, cobbles them together, and narrowly defeats the impulse to lean back.

“You’re nothing,” Hakuro says. “You’re an impostor and a cheat, and every man of value sees straight through your hoity-toity bullshit charm. The only reason you’re even _here_ is because Berthold Hawkeye gave you a backdoor into fake power, and you took it like a hungry dog. Mongrels don’t get to prosper here, Mustang. Don’t you _ever_ think I don’t have my eyes on you.”

Roy does not say _I am not surprised to learn that you don’t have the slightest concept of how alchemy works, let alone my alchemy, let alone the precision and discipline required to use it without obliterating yourself in the process._

He doesn’t say _Why, General, that’s much too kind, but aren’t you married?_

He doesn’t say _Power is power, you imbecile. You can’t fake it._

He doesn’t say _It’s always nice to have a little confirmation that I executed a coup so efficiently that three years have passed, and even_ now _no one who wasn’t involved realizes the extent to which I was responsible._

He doesn’t say anything, because he can’t risk opening his mouth when there are so many screams choking their way up his throat.

He can still see every line that was inked on Riza’s back; the curves and the letters and the sigils superimpose themselves across the vistas, over the rolling dunes and the white walls and the striped pink sashes and the piled-up bodies of the dead. Cinders float on the air; he can _smell_ them; he can smell the beginnings of the rot beneath; the sun takes no prisoners, shows no mercy, brooks no protests, feels no shame—

He does.

He feels everything. He can taste the ash; he can hear the cries, the wails, the begging—so many of them begged, when they had time; if they saw him soon enough; if he didn’t murder them from too great a distance ever to see the terror in their eyes.

So many shot back, but what damn difference could it make against a man who had become a force of nature? No one ever tallied the names of the dead. No one knows how many lives he ended in that city; no one knows how many of the corpses bore his signature, his fingerprints—

“I will strive to be worthy of your attention,” he says, and his hands keep struggling to shake despite the vise grip they have around each other, but his voice emerges levelly. That’s a miracle, of a sort.

Hakuro’s lip curls, and the rage in his eyes hasn’t dissipated a whit, but he’s bored of the game now; he’s said what the anger compelled him to say.

“Enjoy the office, Mustang,” he says, straightening, and one hand smooths down over the front of the uniform, probably without him ever registering that it’s moved. “It’s temporary.”

“All things are, General,” Roy forces out. Sweat beads hot on his spine; it prickles at his hairline, and his stomach churns, but he makes himself smile and speaks over the chaos of the gunfire in his head. “Have a wonderful afternoon.”

Hakuro glares, which is typical, and then turns on his heel and strides back out. His treatment of the outer door leaves the frame rattling; Roy’s head doesn’t fare much better, and the shaking’s moving upward through him from his hands. His heart doesn’t want to stay in his chest; he’s full of jittering empty bullet casings and the _noise_ —

He waits, counting out the seconds one struggle of a breath at a time, until he’s sure Hakuro will have made it to another section of Command, and then he pushes his chair back, sets his clammy hands down on the desk, and stands.

His entire team is staring back at him when he looks up. He doesn’t blame them; he must be a wreck.

It’s not… humiliating, exactly, but it stings like shame—being weak, openly, in front of them. It’s a considerable blessing that he _can_ , of course; knowing that he can trust them not to steamroll him every time his constitution wavers is more reassuring than he can wrangle language to describe, but… all the same. He wanted to be more. He wanted to be someone that they could believe in without the sorts of reservations that they must have now.

“Excuse me,” he says, and he locks his knees and sets his shoulders and starts towards the door.

“Sir,” Riza says, very softly.

“Won’t be long,” he says, sweeping past her, keeping his eyes on the doorknob, and he doesn’t even know if it’s a lie.

He takes the halls at a pace too swift to suffer greetings or interruptions; an unpracticed eye would only see the haste and infer importance. It would take a much astuter judge to detect what’s underneath.

Dignity. Composure. Control. Those are the only weapons that haven’t failed him—the only ones that haven’t cut him open on a double edge; the only ones he can rely on.

He doesn’t run. He won’t. Every muscle in him quavers with the urge; the adrenaline beats through him faster by the second, urgent, thoughtless, desperate, giddily intense—all he wants to do is quell it; all he wants to do is silence the screaming, but the last few rational scraps of him know that he can’t afford to submit to its demands. The reputation is all he has left. Talk is cheap. Images are fragile. He can’t risk it. He _can’t_.

So he walks—briskly, swiftly, smoothly, as though the storms don’t soak him; as though he’s never known anything but the calm. He doesn’t spare a glance for the officers he passes; it’s easier to unfocus his eyes, now, after the damage that the Gate did to them; he nods acknowledgment of the motion of the salutes but doesn’t look at anyone directly—just keeps moving.

His heart thunders; his head roars; he clenches his hands behind his back, but his shoulders keep trying to fold in on themselves; he sets his jaw and tries to think his way through an imaginary chess game; if he’s actively strategizing, he can’t collapse.

That’s the theory, anyway. The practice proves a challenge: can he make it down this last hall before his knees give way, his lungs give out, his heart explodes, his tumbling mind gives up altogether—?

He can’t even think it. If he gives the panic an inch, it drags miles out from him. If he spares it a thought, it will find a voice, and it’s louder than his reason; it’s louder than the instincts shouting at him, prodding at him, needling him to keep himself alive. If he lets it stake a claim, it will destroy him; he and it both know it can.

He’s fine; he’s fine; everything is fine; he inclines his head to recognize another sharp salute; it’s remarkable that he hasn’t crossed paths with anyone above him. They don’t tend to stay much later than they have to, he supposes; they don’t frequent the upper levels of the building where the records rooms and the other unglamorous necessities make their home.

It’s an unglamorous necessity that he’s looking for.

He has a favorite one these days: it’s hardly ever used; he suspects most people don’t know it exists. It’s practically a private retreat at this point, and the fact that it has showers in it hardly diminishes its ability to offer him solitude and silence when he needs them most.

He’s almost there.

The dark behind him has teeth, and it’s _fast_ , and it’s so damn hungry, and he can feel its wet breath on the back of his neck with every step; and he doesn’t deserve to escape it—

Hakuro’s right. Not in the way he thinks he is, of course: the war was real; the war was much too real; what Roy did in the desert was an ongoing massacre that no amount of politicking can qualify or alleviate or erase. There are no reparations tantamount to what he wrought. There is no such thing as an equivalent exchange.

He can make it. He knows he can; he doesn’t have a choice. He owes too much to too many to let them down now; he carries too much borrowed faith to sink to his knees in a hallway of headquarters and bury his face in his hands.

He’s running on the fumes of his own resolve now—heart hammering; head whirling; vision blurred around all the edges, fading into black. Every anvil-ring of his heartbeat feels like it compresses his whole body—like he’s imploding around it; like the whole of him is destined to condense into a neutron star, and if there are any survivors—

Well. It wouldn’t be the first time that he obliterated just about everything in his wake, would it? It wouldn’t be the first time that he charted high on the list of the worst creatures that have ever sauntered back and forth across this planet; it wouldn’t be the first time that he crawled through dreck and dragged himself upright and tried to play at humanity. It wouldn’t be the first time that he fooled the susceptible with the act.

He can see the door. The fear runs hot—is that ironic? He can’t remember anymore; he just knows that his blood burns underneath his skin; the sweat simmers; the frantic pulse in his temples and his throat might light an uninitiated man on fire.

Ten more steps—five—three—he reaches out, misses the door handle on his first attempt, grits his teeth, grabs it—

He shoulders through and waits, easing the door shut behind him as best he can when his whole body bears a striking resemblance to an earthquake in progress. The shower room greets him with silence: no running water; no squeak of toes on tile; no whisper of terrycloth. He waits, holding his breath for another long, excruciating second—it scrapes defiantly at his throat, an animal seeking freedom; he can hardly blame it, but it _hurts_ —before he turns to the door, presses his palms together, and then applies them to the lock.

It’s flimsy, as barriers between him and the rest of the universe go, but it’ll do. It’ll hold. At least for long enough.

Most of his body wants to sag backwards, lean against the door, sink to the presumably bacteria-swarmed damp of the linoleum and just lie still for as long as he can stand the old screams and silences and prayers and curses that accompany his whirling thoughts.

But there’s bile in his throat; he can taste it, and it keeps clawing its way higher the same as the sand does, and the night does, and the dreams do—doggedly, unhesitating, like it owns him.

He staggers forward, casting around for something like balance to steady himself, but the pounding of his heart in his ears must have damaged them too much to serve their secondary purpose now. He fumbles for the edge of the closest sink, grasps it, leans on it, fixes his other hand on it for more leverage when his knees begin to shake—

The acrid taste percolating in the back of his throat doesn’t usher up anything else—he waits, fighting the breaths in and downward and back up again one at a time, but nothing more follows. Just the bitterness. Just a premonition; just a promise of worse to come.

He drags in a deeper breath, lets it out as slowly as he can, and tries to focus on the gleaming brightness of the porcelain in the bowl of the sink. Silver drain—the kind with two dozen little holes in it, rather than a stopper. It’s very clean. He will say that for Central Command: their janitors are and always have been top-notch. It’s everyone else you have to worry about.

Rinsing his mouth out doesn’t purge the taste; he spits twice, three times, considers cramming his fingers down his throat, reconsiders once he remembers how many pens he’s twirled and spun and tapped against the desk today, and settles for splashing his face with the chilly water instead. His glasses are still on his desk, aren’t they? He hopes so. He hasn’t developed a knack for keeping track of them yet; he never remembers. He needs to buy an extra pair for the house so that he doesn’t leave himself squinting to the verge of migraines again; that wasn’t his favorite way to spend a weekend, but…

This is better. This is better, because frigid water against his skin is not a sensation that the desert offered often; he always showered at the end of the day, to scrub as much of the blood and ash as he could eradicate off of himself before he slept. Maes got into the habit of hoarding water for him to be sure there was a fraction left, but it was tepid at best, boiling at worst, from sitting in the sun until he used it.

The fact that he got water was a privilege of rank.

The fact that he got one night after another to use it was a combination of injustice and abuse of power and luck of the draw that crushed so many other, better people beneath the ever-grinding wheels of the war machine, and—

He was doing so well at determinedly not thinking about it for fifteen seconds at a stretch, there.

He can do this. He knows he can. It doesn’t matter if he knows he can; he _has_ to. He won’t be able to function here—here, now, in this building, at this work; and this work is the only thing on offer that might see him forgiven for a flake or two of the sheets of ash—unless he can get his head under control.

It used to be easier. Never easy, but rarely this hard. This part—

It’s another trial he’s more than earned. He’s in no position to complain; he has no right to resentment. This is his due. This is _less_ than his due; his due should be a slow, slow, blood-spattered, agonizing death—brimstone and fire like the world has never seen, greater and powerfully worse than anything he ever dealt. Pushing through some minor mental torment doesn’t even chart on the scale of what he—

A shower curtain hisses, grommets rattling along the bar, and his head jerks up as his heart-rate surges; he has time to watch his own pupils dilate in the mirror as he hears his pulse start to race in his ears again—a ruthless staccato like machine-gun fire—

“Huh,” a voice says from within the stall revealed by the sweep of a familiar silver hand. “I wondered.”

This is like one of those dreams with the quicksand pits of blood, where all his muscles freeze despite the sweltering heat.

Ed steps out of the shower stall fully-clothed—even more remarkably, fully- _uniformed_ , without any serious quartermaster violations that Roy can pinpoint—which is unfortunate insofar as most of the alternatives might have startled Roy out of today’s edition of waking nightmare. Roy finds it very difficult to believe that Ed outgrew his old boots, given that they were immensely oversized to start with, and the feet fitting into the current black and slightly over-buckled model look no larger than those were, but it’s strangely unsettling to see him wearing not a scrap of red. He is the only person Roy has ever met who can make that color enough his own to shake Roy’s conviction that it belongs to the desert and the dead.

“It was the smacking your hands to the door thing that gave you away,” Ed says, gesturing vaguely towards Roy’s hack-job handiwork on the lock. “Aren’t a whole lot of people in this building who pat the shower room doors to make sure they’re doing okay, and fewer of ’em who get an energy feedback crackle afterward.”

Roy swallows, weighing his words. After a moment’s indecision, he decides against trying to fake a smile. Ed won’t buy it anyway.

“I thought that might be it,” he says. He tilts his chin towards the shower Ed just emerged from—at the worst possible moment, of course. Like the old times never ended. “What are you in for?”

Ed extracts a book from under his arm and holds it up, more as a visual aide than for scrutiny—although perhaps he’s forgotten that Roy can’t make out the title from this distance anymore. Perhaps he never learned that. They might never have had that conversation; Roy can’t remember who he told the details, and who he left to piece it together from the context clues. He’s never liked looking weak in front of Ed, either. Most likely that’s the single greatest sign of weakness.

“Research,” Ed is saying. “There’s a new librarian at the main branch who’s… I dunno. Really into me or something. She’s nice and everything, but I can’t get any work done there ’cause she just wants to _talk_ to me all the time, and I can’t get anything done in the office ’cause there’s constantly people going in and out, so I asked Lieutenant-Colonel Ross if I could conduct some of my research hours elsewhere, and she’s cool with it.” He shrugs; the book goes back into hiding. “Quiet up here.” Roy can still distinguish the way his eyes sharpen—his focus returns from ranging around the room at large as if he’s seeing it in an entirely new light now that he’s described it, and it fixes far too intently on Roy’s face again—which means that he’s about to make a point. “I guess you figured that part out.”

“It had occurred to me,” Roy says.

“Guess we can’t say it’s peaceful,” Ed says.

“That,” Roy says, gesturing to Ed from head to toe, and his hand hardly shakes, “is what I would call a low blow. And then I would add that I expect nothing less, because I have proportionate standards, a—”

“And I’d get so huffy and offended that I’d go full volcanic on you,” Ed says, idly, “and you’d’ve distracted me from the point.”

Roy leans back against the sink—gingerly, but he knows he sells it. He trusts his limbs enough to risk folding his arms, although the tremor probably undermines him. Ed will notice. Ed has gotten much too good at noticing those sorts of things. “All right. Would you care to illuminate precisely what the point is?”

“You tell me,” Ed says, eyeing him harder still. “What’s going on?” Before Roy can speak, Ed holds up the hand unburdened with literature—the metal one. “And just as far as fair warning—if you say you’re fine, I’m gonna hit you.”

Roy smiles, thinly. It almost hurts. “Violence isn’t the answer, Fullmetal.”

Ed’s gaze doesn’t waver. “Neither is locking yourself up in the showers every time your brain goes on the fritz.”

Roy can’t help staring at him. At least some things haven’t changed. “‘Fritz’?”

“What would you call it?” Ed asks. “It’s not doing what it’s supposed to. Problem is you can’t just smack it on the side like a radio and hope the wires settle better now that it knows you’re serious.” He pauses. “I mean—you _can_ , obviously, but usually that does more harm than good in the long run. You know they’re saying now that multiple concussions probably causes all kinds of memory loss? Makes sense, I guess, but I would’ve been a _little_ more careful back in the day if I’d known that.”

“You were a little everything,” Roy says. It is not unlike a half-drowned shipwreck victim hurling himself at another drifting spar that he knows quite well won’t hold his weight, but he has to believe that it’s preferable to not trying at all.

“Ran into Sergeant Fuery in the hallway the other day,” Ed says. “We were talking, y’know, and I asked him how you were, and he said you’d been tetchy since the trip. I asked him what trip, and he paused a second like he’d said too much, and then he changed the subject. I thought maybe it was something personal—bad news about a relative or something like that. But that was a stupid guess.”

Roy knows it’s coming. He turns towards the sink again, avoiding looking at the mirror, and watches his hands tighten their grip on the rim of the porcelain until his knuckles blanch white enough to match it. It’s easier not to look, and the rest of this will be difficult enough.

“It was Ishval,” Ed says. “Wasn’t it?”

“Grumman is convinced that if we make a big show of making peace,” Roy says, slowly, measuring the words out with every breath, “everyone will forget what was done.” He works the saliva around in his mouth and looks intently at the drain. “Unsurprisingly, the Ishvalans themselves think otherwise.”

Ed is silent for long enough that Roy almost musters the will to glance at him.

“Anybody come after you?” Ed asks. “While you were there, I mean. I know people’re coming after you all the time, more or less. Anybody in particular up there?”

“Yes,” Roy says. “Three attempts to assassinate me—three that made it far enough for us to notice, that is. As far as we can tell, separate organizations. I’m the only unifying factor.” He swallows, and he forces the corners of his mouth to turn upwards into something like a smile. “I don’t blame them.”

“Figures,” Ed says.

That is just enough to overcome the gravity holding his head down: Roy turns to look. Ed’s face doesn’t shift a centimeter as their eyes meet.

“What does that mean?” Roy asks.

“Exactly what it sounded like,” Ed says. “That I’m not surprised you said that, given that you’re buried under about ten feet of guilt at the best of times, and it sounds like this little excursion added another five all on its own.” He draws a deep breath and lets it out slow. He breaks the eye contact first—to look at the floor as he raises his shoulders again in another lopsided shrug. “I think there’s probably a part of you that wanted them to do it—kill you, I mean. ’Cause carrying fifteen feet of shit gets hard, and after long enough, you’re willing to take just about anything if it’ll give you a break. And I think there’s also a part of you that thinks that you deserve it.”

Roy can’t feel his fingertips, but that’s all right, because he doesn’t need them to scrounge up the last rasp of his own voice.

“Do you think I deserve it?” he asks.

“No,” Ed says, looking at him again. “You were doing what you had to—”

“What I was ordered to,” Roy says.

“If you hadn’t,” Ed says, “they would’ve cut you down and sent Kimblee through your quadrants, too. Once it started, it was over. You couldn’t have stopped it. Maybe you could’ve deserted the second you saw it for what it was, and maybe you even would’ve gotten away if you’d been quick enough, but it _still_ would’ve happened, and then there’d be nobody here who really understands. There’d be nobody here who knows shit needs to change and has the power to try to do it. If you hadn’t been there, we’d be worse off. They would, too. No, that doesn’t fuckin’ excuse any of it, on an individual level, but—big picture’s what history’s going to put in the books. It’s a better picture if you’re in it.”

“It was murder,” Roy says.

“Yeah,” Ed says. “But murdering _you_ isn’t gonna make anybody else less dead. Penance is great, Mustang, but if it stops you in your tracks instead of pushing you forward, it’s useless. Just like everything else in this shitty-ass world. Either you keep moving, or you quit.”

Roy can’t say _The doctors say you should stay as still as possible while you’re actively bleeding_. He hasn’t earned a scrap of self-pity, and Ed has never paid much attention to doctors anyway.

He digs for something—anything—else to offer and comes up empty. That in itself is a terror that he can’t describe.

“Hey,” Ed says, mercifully, and they both know it. “Where’s the flask?”

Never mind.

Roy arches an eyebrow. “I don’t—”

“I’ve seen through your bullshit for years now,” Ed says. Roy believes it. “I’m on your side.” That he doesn’t believe, but Ed extends a hand. “Give it here.”

Roy looks at the hand extended towards him—really looks. It’s not purely procrastination, either: Ed’s automail is a marvel of engineering. The design combines such unprecedented heights of functionality and understated flare that Roy wants to walk to Rush Valley and shake Winry Rockbell’s hand.

Incidentally, walking to Rush Valley would take him very, _very_ far from the rest of this conversation.

“If another part of my body was uncooperative,” he says, slowly, “would you take away the crutch that was the only thing getting me through the day with some semblance of normalcy?”

“I would if it was gonna kill you,” Ed says. “And I’d break it over my metal knee and throw it back in your face if you didn’t hand it over.”

That sounds… frighteningly plausible, for Ed.

“It’s my property,” Roy says. “You ca—”

“Stealing poison from somebody is a service to their liver and their life,” Ed says. “Gosh, I feel so bad.”

Roy folds his arms again. “I don’t need—”

“To pour whiskey onto your problems?” Ed says. “Yeah, I agree. Give it here.” As Roy sets his jaw, Ed’s eyebrows arch, and then his mouth follows suit, wryly. “Let me put it this way. Neither of us is leaving this room until you cough it up, Mustang. You and I both know I can kick your ass on a good day if you don’t have your gloves on first, and somethin’ tells me this isn’t a good day anyway.”

Roy wouldn’t fancy his odds overmuch even if his knees were holding steady, which they are currently not particularly inclined to do.

It doesn’t mean that he’s admitting anything. It doesn’t mean that he’s giving in. This is a simple compromise in the better interests of his heretofore unbroken nose. He’s starting to sense the years prowling behind him, still mostly in the shadows, but catching up—waiting for him to slip, or slow, or leave a stretch of vitals open for their teeth. He’ll need his nose intact if he wants to have any charm left at all, pretty soon.

“Heavens,” he says, lifting his hand slowly and deliberately in the hopes that it might stop shaking simply out of courtesy. Not much luck there, but he slides it into his jacket anyway. “Threatening a superior officer with bodily harm? And all this time, I thought you were such an exemplary subordinate.”

“Sorry to disappoint,” Ed says. “You think I’m gonna forget the whole thing if you move at the speed of molasses? I don’t have all day here, Mustang.”

Roy goes still and blinks as owlishly as he’s able. He hasn’t lost his touted and well-practiced knack for contrariness just yet.

He hopes that doesn’t wash away with all the rest. It’s always looked good on him.

“Don’t you?” he asks. “What a shame. I have so many pockets, you see; it may take me several minutes to discover which—”

“If you’ve had that much by four in the afternoon,” Ed says, “you’re gonna get a lot worse than me repossessing your property. Give it.”

Toying with Ed, for all that the action is its own reward, has summoned a slight downturn to Ed’s mouth that makes Roy wonder if he might be pushing this a fraction too far.

Is Ed really scared for him? Or is Ed scared that he won’t be able to repay the old debts? They both know he amounted quite a tally, in the days when Roy bent the rules to make room for all of Ed’s shenanigans, signing off on forms that would have jeopardized the whole trajectory of an enterprising colonel’s career if anyone had realized precisely how long a leash Roy had granted his fiercest little dog. They fought like children, then, but when the chips were down, Roy opened every door that Ed tried the handle of. Has Ed sussed out, in the interim, just how much of his desperation rang familiar, and just how many dangerous allowances Roy made and covered up for him as a result?

The most likely scenario is that Ed recognizes a condemned building when he sees one, and he doesn’t want to be blamed for the impending implosion this time. Ed’s the one renowned for favoring logic over just about everything else, but Roy’s no stranger to the scientific method. People tend to forget that—to forget that it was alchemy that damned him first.

He fishes out the flask and holds it out into the space between them. He’s not abandoning the sink just yet; he’s endured enough humiliation here without subjecting himself to buckling knees and a brief interlude splayed out on the floor. The floor in question looks clean enough from here, but he doesn’t trust Central’s janitors _that_ much.

Ed hesitates for a fraction of a second before stepping forward and snatching the flask from his fingers. Metal clinks on metal. It sounds like a cascade of bullet casings, and Roy’s head rings with it, and his heart clenches tight again.

“When you show me a check-in form from a doctor’s office,” Ed says, tucking the flask into one of the pockets just inside his jacket, and it’s hardly _Roy’s_ fault that they include a perfect flask-sized compartment in the uniform that you live and die and kill in, “then you can have this back.”

There is something truly exhilarating about the fact that Ed can still surprise him, and it still registers on the barren flatline stretch of his available emotions as something of a shock.

Terrible, too, of course. But terrible and exhilarating is better than terrible alone.

“Exactly what do you think that will accomplish?” Roy asks. “They can’t give me a pill. Shall I go to a hypnotist, perhaps? That might be worth pursuing. You and I are both so credulous; perhaps a few swings of a pendulum will cure me of my absurd notions of how the things I’m guilty of are deeper than most people can fathom. Or you could come with me, and we could simply hypnotize you into _believing_ that I’d been hypnotized, at which point—”

“Don’t care who,” Ed says, utterly unmoved by the histrionics. “Or what, or for how long. But you have to see somebody.”

Roy works his jaw, swallowing half a dozen sharper things to say. They cut, on the way down, but he deserves that, too. “Whom would you suggest?”

“Psychiatry as a field is getting bigger by the day,” Ed says, eyes still hard-edged agate. “There’re gonna be tons of people with no connections to this place, who aren’t gonna spread all your secrets to the people who’d use them against you.”

Roy curls his hands a little tighter where they’re holding him up against the sink. The porcelain still feels cold. That must be something like a good sign.

“You want me to _talk_ to someone,” he says.

“Yeah,” Ed says, and his eyebrows shift, but his posture doesn’t—there’s a defiant angle to his hips; in retrospect, no one ever should have outfitted him with a cavalry skirt. The shape of his waist implies far too many hells without a draping red coat in the way, and Roy intended never to notice those things. Roy intended never to notice any of it. “It’s not going to fix everything. It’s not going to change any of what you did out there. But it might change you. And it might help. For a lot of people, it does.”

“I don’t need help,” Roy says.

And Ed—

— _laughs_. Harsh and fast and dry; sun-bright and sandstorm-vicious.

“The nightmares,” Roy grinds out, “and the paranoia, and the… all of it—small-scale misery is a luxury for the living. The only ones with any right to other people’s pity are the dead.”

“The dead don’t have any use for it,” Ed says, and his eyes stay so cold that Roy’s heart stills for a second. “They’re gone. It’s over. You’re still here. And needless suffering isn’t going to swap you out for them.”

Roy sets his jaw against the knee-jerk impulse to say _Rarely have I needed anything more_.

“You’re never gonna wake up one morning and be the same person you were before the damage,” Ed says. “You have to work with the you that you’ve got.”

Roy watches him for a few more seconds. This is a game. This has to be a game. If he can determine the objective, he can decipher Ed’s strategy, and then—

“Your choice,” Ed says. He pats his jacket, just over the pocket, with the metal hand, to summon a dull reminiscence of the clinking noise. “Don’t forget I’ve got a hostage.”

That’s easier. Ed must know it. In a way, he’s being kind.

Roy wets his lips. “Are you going to start sending me ransom letters pieced together from newspaper print?”

“Probably,” Ed says. “Would that work?”

“I doubt it,” Roy says.

“Me, too,” Ed says. He smirks, and puts his hand on his hip instead, and Roy might have gone the rest of his life without realizing how absolutely perfect the angles of that body are, if Ed hadn’t caught him when he was just so _weak_. “I’ll figure something else out.”

“I have no doubt that you will,” Roy says. “And I have no doubt that I will regret every moment of it.”

“We’ll see,” Ed says. He jerks his head towards the door, and his ponytail swings. “You gonna let me out, or what?”

“Only because you asked so nicely,” Roy says. He steels himself, tests his knees, finds them relatively reliable, draws a deep breath, and starts towards the door.

  


* * *

  


After slogging through a few more hours of forced attempts at normalcy, all Roy has the slightest desire to do is drag his body into his house, throw all the deadbolts on the door, hurl himself down onto the couch, and drink until the dark caves in around him. Is that so much to ask? If he plays his cards—well, his cups—precisely right, he may just manage to snatch a dreamless stupor out of the jaws of sleep; he may just—

See a light on within the house as he approaches—from the parlor, most likely. By the color, faintly visible through the frosted glass of the windowpane beside the door, it must be one of the reading lamps. It couldn’t be the fireplace; no burglar in the world—

There’s something on the door—a little pale square secured to it just beneath the peephole. A… note? No burglar in the world would leave a _note_ either.

Roy knows whose handwriting it will be before he makes it up onto the step and tugs the slip of paper free of the tape securing it in place. Which is good, because all it says is _Relax, it’s me_.

He folds it up, slides it into his pocket, and pushes one hand back through his hair while he breathes a few more times. This is fine. He can handle it. He can put off his escape into oblivion for a few more minutes while he eradicates a persistent pest from the safety of his house.

He’s in control of this. He’s in control of himself. It’s fine. All of it is fine.

He takes his time extracting his keys from the depths of a pocket and fitting them one by one into the locks. He’s not quite optimistic enough to hope that it might make Ed squirm a bit; he suspects that the sheer lack of shame is an intractable congenital defect. Ed’s never been disposed to respect personal boundaries before—at least not when he thought that they were stupid boundaries that shouldn’t have existed in the first place—and Roy doesn’t expect him to start now.

He lets himself in, shuts the door behind himself, turns the three bolts and the lock on the knob, sets down his briefcase, hangs up his coat, and leans down—gingerly; his back has begun to execute myriad minor vengeances for the many years of slouching at his desk—to remove his boots. Ed’s are arranged next to the umbrella stand, almost neatly; one stands upright, but the other tipped over onto the floor.

“Not that I’m not honored past description by your presence alone,” Roy calls in the general direction of the unlit fireplace in the parlor, “but exactly what are you doing here?”

“Helping,” Ed calls back.

“I’ve always been fascinated by the speed at which language evolves,” Roy says, starting down the hall. “Why, just last week, we would have called this ‘breaking and entering’.”

“Yeah,” Ed says, and Roy’s close enough now to see the slice of his grin in the lamplight. “Must be tough to keep up at your age.”

He’s somehow splayed himself out enough to claim the entire couch despite his limited surface area, so Roy drops into the armchair opposite.

“What are you doing here?” Roy says again, with a quarter of the volume and none of the warmth.

The remnants of the smile vanish, and a part of Roy curls forlornly at a loss that he doesn’t have the time to mourn before Ed’s eyes flare defiant instead.

“Same thing as always,” Ed says. “Makin’ sure you don’t do anything stupid.”

It’s a wonder that the guilt hasn’t smothered Ed by now: he seems to manufacture more of it everywhere he goes.

“I’m not in any danger,” Roy says, which is something like the truth; “and even if I was, I’m hardly your responsibility.”

“You think I don’t know that?” Ed asks, and he actually goes to the trouble of sitting up straight so that he can re-slouch at an angle with more attitude. It just figures, doesn’t it, that the only thing Roy ever succeeded at teaching him was melodrama? “Tough shit. You need somebody here right now, whether you like it or not. You don’t have to talk to me if it’s such a pain in the ass to acknowledge my existence, but I’m sticking around.”

“You’re not a pain in the ass,” Roy says—partly just on autopilot; partly because it’s been such a long damn day that the dregs of the social niceties are all he has left when he reaches down and scrabbles around for speech. And partly because then he can add: “I’d estimate you can reach at least my lower back these days.”

“ _Wow_ ,” Ed says, widening his eyes. “That’s _so_ original. I’ve never heard anything that crushingly witty before in my entire _life_. You should write a book. No, you should do a radio show. Oh, hey! I’ve got it—you should _run the country_! How’s that?”

It shouldn’t sting, but with Roy’s nerves as raw as this week’s worn them, he can’t say that he’s surprised.

He heaves himself back up out of the chair and starts for the kitchen. “I know better than to argue with you when you’ve got some fool idea that you’re doing the right thing, so… make yourself at home, I suppose. More at home. At home with my blessing.”

“Hard to do that when you don’t have any damn food,” Ed calls after him.

“What an unspeakable tragedy,” Roy says. “If only someone had warned me that I’d be having an unannounced guest, I could have stopped by the store.”

“I mean you don’t have _any_ food,” Ed says. By the creak, followed by a few soft thumps, followed by the increasing volume of his voice, he’s heading down the hall as Roy stands very still in his kitchen and stares at the items on the countertop. “Which is weird, first of all, because presumably you eventually have to eat _something_ , since most of my extensive research has indicated that bastards are still classified as human. And which, second of all, meant I had to go find some so that _I_ could eat something.”

Roy approaches the bags strewn across his counter with caution. They may yet reveal themselves to be full of snakes. “You… bought me food.”

“Can’t believe your hearing’s going at the ripe old age of forty-five,” Ed says.

Roy blinks, half-turning. “I’m thirty-t—”

“I bought _myself_ food,” Ed says. “Because you’re apparently a secret ascetic, or you’re torturing yourself, or you just don’t have any energy left to care, or whatever it is—but I was hungry. If there’s some left over when I’m done, I guess you can have it. It’d be stupid to carry it all the way home.”

Roy listens to his heart beating for a few seconds. It’s all of those things, isn’t it? A different blend of them on any given day.

“Quite right,” he says. “Waste of energy. Might as well just leave it.”

A better and more relevant question, then: why is Ed squandering some of that golden-hearted goodness on the likes of him?

“What did you get for yourself?” he asks.

“Xingese,” Ed says, crossing to the bags and starting to rip them all open. “I didn’t know what y… I… liked… from this place… ’cause it’s new, and all… so I just got a lot of everything.”

“That was very kind of you,” Roy says. “Towards yourself, I mean.”

“I try,” Ed says. He shoves a little paper container at Roy’s chest. “Here, I got three of these. I doubt I can finish more’n two, so have at it.”

“Thank you,” Roy says, and he lets the sincerity filter through into his voice.

Ed looks up and then directly at him—eyes locked on his for a long second, analyzing fast.

Then he quirks a smile, and then he ducks back to the food again.

“Sure thing,” he says. “You like potstickers?”

  


* * *

  


They eat more or less in silence, excepting the occasional mouthful-muffled request for a seasoning or sauce that migrated to the other side of the table. This part’s fine. This is what Roy would expect from Ed, whose single-mindedness lends itself to a strange sort of appreciation for one sensation at a time. He suspects that Ed started cherishing food a great deal more when Al could cherish it with him again. He suspects that Ed tried avidly not to let himself enjoy it up until that point, and that it marked a momentous discovery for both of them when they realized together how wonderful it could be.

There. That’s good. That’s a good thing to think about. That’s a good thing to have in the world. There are some left; he just has to find them, and hold on tight, and make himself believe that they matter enough to counteract the rest of it. That’s not so hard, is it?

Ed cleans his plate with the approximate speed and ferocity of an eager vacuum and then pushes it away from himself, sits back, and watches intently while Roy moves the contents of his around with his chopsticks a bit. It’s not that he’s not hungry—or not that he’s particularly un-hungry, he supposes. It’s just that he’s not much of anything at all.

Ed swallows, looks at the wall for a few seconds, looks at Roy again, tilts his head, and works his jaw. Roy braces himself and draws an abstract design through his rice with the leading chopstick. Modern art.

“You wanna talk about it?” Ed asks. “Either… y’know. Today, or the trip. Both. Whatever.”

Roy lays his chopsticks down, sits back, and folds his hands on the edge of the tabletop.

“I don’t,” he says, levelly, “but thank you.”

Ed nods once, but he stays upright and tensed in his chair, which can only mean he hasn’t finished.

He doesn’t keep Roy waiting long.

“Have you talked to Lieutenant Hawkeye about it?” he asks. “Did she go with you? On that trip.”

“No,” Roy says, “and no. I would prefer—”

“I’d prefer a pony,” Ed says. “We’re both gonna be sad, disappointed little boys tonight. You have to do something.”

Roy watches him. “No, I don’t.”

Ed’s eyes narrow, and his body tilts forward over the table. Roy doesn’t retreat.

“Yes,” Ed says, “you do. Or it’s gonna get bigger, and you’re gonna get worse, and everything you’ve spent all this time building is going to fall apart. And then you’re not even going to have the _choice_ to deal with it, because it’ll be too late.”

“How portentous,” Roy says.

Ed drums his fingers on the tabletop—the right hand, presumably because it makes more noise. The scowl sets in. “You really think you’re better off suppressing all of it? You _really_ think that? Or you just think that the shit that you did makes you unworthy of anything kinder than the worst that you can get?”

Ed’s levying it like a challenge so that Roy’s instinct will be to prove him wrong. He’s gotten much subtler over the years, and it’s a tactic more manipulative than he ever would have been able to execute in the early days, but it’s still rather evident from where Roy sits, and he’s too damn tired to play this game.

“What I think,” Roy says, “is that the barest scrap of equivalency possible is for me to find a way to cope with this on my own.”

Ed sits back, mouth flattening into a thin line. This is real anger, half-contained—not the showy, explosive rage he flings at other people to make them go away, like an insect with poison colors on the backs of its wings.

“You’re an idiot,” Ed says.

“And a fraud, apparently,” Roy says. “And a coward who hides in the showers.”

Ed’s mouth tightens a fraction more, and then there’s a flash of teeth. “I didn’t fuckin’ say that.”

“You wouldn’t,” Roy says. “But I did.”

He can almost see the calculations unfolding—a hundred-thousand scribbled variables; overlapping functions ushered by a spray of numerals—behind Ed’s eyes.

“Is _that_ what you really think?” Ed asks.

“I don’t know,” Roy says. “It’s getting difficult to know anything.”

“Fuck it,” Ed says. “Wild speculation’s almost as good. It’s gotten me through a lot.”

“I’m not sure that works for everyone as well as it works for you,” Roy says.

Ed plants his metal elbow on the table. It makes a nice, solid _thunk_ against the wood, and then he leans forward, raising an eyebrow slowly.

“Mustang,” he says, “what’ve you got to lose?”

Roy stares him down, smothering the flicker of anger before it can catch his stomach lining, and then his ribcage, and then his esophagus. “Do you realize how agonizing it is for me every time your reckless excuses for emotional logic start to make sense?”

Ed claps his free hand over his heart and mimes collapsing against the back of the chair. “Oh, no, a mortal blow to my wounded feelings. You fucking _cad_.” He sits up. “You ever consider rock bottom’s actually a great place to be? Nowhere to go but up. Everything you do is an improvement.”

“That’s specious,” Roy says, folding his hands, “and you know it.”

“You think you’re gonna get me to shut up by beating me to death with your vocabulary?” Ed asks.

“Hardly,” Roy says. “I occasionally dare to dream that it might slow you down.”

“Good luck,” Ed says. He picks up his fork, twirls it, and then sucks on the tines. “Really, though,” he says. “What’s your alternative? Don’t figure the higher-ups would look nicely on you asking ’em to relocate your office closer to the shower room.”

Damn. Too late. Roy can feel his blood heating; steam seeps upward, steeps his bones—when it starts to boil, the calm on the surface shatters straight through. Ed deserves better than that. Ed’s here because he cares, whatever his reasons; Ed’s here because he feels, inexplicable as it may be, that this is the right thing to do. That’s what drives him. That’s why Roy can’t afford to push him away, whether or not he merits a moment of the time.

He takes a deep breath, and then another, and then forces a narrow smile.

“Maybe I could cordon off that back corner and use it as a satellite desk,” he says. “Install a capacious ‘in’ box to ignore. Hide behind the curtain every time things started to go south.”

“Hiding,” Ed says, tapping the fork against the edge of his plate—just loud enough that each _clink_ in the slightly uneven rhythm feels like a tiny nail battering through Roy’s skull. “That’s good. That’s a great solution. That’s what we came all this way for—for our last chance at something like a sane fucking country to sit in his office and shake every time the past comes after him, and _hide_. That’s what we fought for. That’s what Fu died for, and Captain Buccaneer, and Lieutenant-Colonel Hu—”

“Don’t,” Roy says. His pulse beats in his ears, in his fingertips, in his toes—fervently against his sternum, against the back of his eyes—

“Don’t what?” Ed asks. “Tell you the truth? This is nothing you don’t already know. You’re smart, Mustang. You _know_. You know you’re balling up everything everybody else has helped you build and throwing it away if you let this shit get the better of you. You know the only thing stopping you is—what? Is it pride? Or is it just that you’re scared that if you start showing any sign you don’t have it all figured out, the whole damn house of cards will come down? You ever think maybe it’s coming down whether you like it or not, Mustang? Who else are you planning to blame?”

How dare he.

How _dare_ this insolent _child_ who’s only ever seen the kindest, softest edges of the darkness—who’s only ever wounded monsters who looked and talked like villains; who’s only ever drawn blood of his own volition, because he was _protected_ from so many sides that he never even saw the deepest corners of the night—

How dare he even _speak_ of what it means, and what’s behind it, and what’s owed, and how damn _easy_ it must be to push it all into the past.

How _dare_ he—

No.

Just before the fury crests into a blood-red wave, a gasp of clear air suffuses Roy’s brain.

_No_.

He almost cracked. He’ll have to be more careful.

He takes a breath, and then a second, and then a third.

“You’re trying to make me angry,” he says. “You’re riling me up on purpose, so that I’ll…” He pauses, extracts his clenched fingers from one another, and re-folds his hands. “Well, the motive I’m not as clear on. What was the intention of baiting me into throttling you, exactly?”

“Wanted you to go to jail for murder,” Ed says, mouth twisting up. “Duh. Figure they’d straighten you out over there in a hurry.”

Roy looks at him.

Ed sighs, scrubs his left hand down his face, and then pushes it back up, threading his fingers into his hair.

“Tryin’ to get you to feel _something_ ,” he says. “Don’t care what.”

“I feel all kinds of things,” Roy says, stupidly, before his better judgment picks itself up off the floor enough to stop his mouth. “Far too many, and far too much. That’s the whole problem; I can’t—I don’t have any control over myself, and the slightest provocation—”

“That doesn’t count,” Ed says, shifting his weight to tilt his chair back to the brink of precariousness, with just his right hand resting on the table for balance. “Shit you’re actively trying _not_ to feel isn’t the same. You’re locked up. You know that, right? You’re getting buried. And you gotta blast your way out of there somehow. It’s only gonna get deeper.”

Roy watches him for a long, long moment—long enough that the chair teeters back and forth three times, and Ed’s gaze stops wandering the far reaches of Roy’s kitchen and darts towards his face again, and then Ed lets the chair fall, and the front two legs slam back down on the floor.

“What?” Ed asks.

“Why are you here?” Roy asks.

“Because of earlier,” Ed says. “Figured you’d probably installed at least one more deadbolt on the door, which put it into the challenge category, so I had to give it a shot.”

Roy makes sure to blink as slowly and as dryly as possible. It’s a bit of an art form. He’s a bit of a virtuoso.

Ed rolls his eyes. “ _Fine_. I don’t get to do anywhere near enough stupid hero crap in my new job as I did when you were letting me run around wrecking stuff and then saving people from it, so seeing you struggling with shit was like catnip. Al keeps saying I’ve got a savior complex. Guess maybe he’s right.”

Roy raises his eyebrows, also slowly. He’s excellent at arch, muted surprise, too.

And at humility, obviously.

“Shut up,” Ed says—and then, immediately, “It does _so_ qualify as talking when you’re doing that much with your face. So shut up. I owe you one. Maybe even two. You pulled out a lot of stops for me back in the day. My turn to show up and try to make things suck a _little_ less.”

Is he… blushing?

Interesting.

Regardless of the curious condition of the capillaries in his cheeks, Ed shoves his chair back, stands, grabs up his plate, and reaches towards Roy’s, only then to hesitate.

“You done with this?” he asks. “Or were you planning to pick at it for another half an hour?”

“I don’t ‘pick’,” Roy says. “I artfully rearrange.”

“Bullshit,” Ed says, snatching up the plate.

“Thank you,” Roy says.

“Don’t get used to it,” Ed says, dumping the dishware in the sink.

“I wasn’t planning to,” Roy says, and that, for once, _is_ the truth.

  


* * *

  


Roy waits, expecting Ed to stretch, probably extravagantly—he’s imagining both arms up over the head, the left arcing more easily of course; and at least one leg flung out, and a jaw-cracking catlike yawn—and make a comment, take his leave, and go.

How is it that he can still forget how much unholy glee Ed gleans from defying him for its own sake?

Ed has claimed the entirety of the couch again, as well as several volumes from Roy’s library. He’s made significant headway into the first one by the time the clock hands start creeping towards eleven, and Roy sets his newspaper down.

“Ed,” he says.

The noncommittal noise usually indicates that a small fraction of Ed’s brain has acknowledged the interruption and would like the interruption to cease and desist so that the remainder of Ed’s brain can continue to devote itself to the task at hand.

“Ed,” Roy says again, louder.

This noise, marginally more committal, comes accompanied by a faint growl from the back of Ed’s throat, and segues into a reluctant prying of Ed’s eyes away from the text. They blink a few times before they succeed in focusing on Roy.

“What?” Ed says.

“It’s a bit late,” Roy says. He also lists tactful understatement among his many talents.

Ed blinks again, contorts to tip his head back over the arm of the couch and look upside-down at the clock on the fireplace mantel, frowns, and then reconfigures his spine into a better position for eyeing Roy. “Yeah?”

Roy has also somehow forgotten that Ed can be remarkably unreceptive to hints the size of a supply truck.

“It just occurred to me,” Roy says, as delicately as he can with the exhaustion hauling at every last centimeter of his will, “that if we’re going to call you a cab, it might be wise to do that soon so that you make it home with plenty of time to sl—”

“Okay,” Ed says, wrinkling his nose. “Comin’ clean—I didn’t do all of that _just_ out of the goodness of my heart and shit. I—I also kind of—I mean, as an exchange, just… could I sleep here?”

Roy manages to stop his mouth from falling open, but he can’t help the staring; that’s too involuntary altogether to suppress.

“Just crashin’ on the couch for a night or two, maybe,” Ed says quickly. “It’s—I mean, I’m—having trouble sleeping. At my place. Is all. Because I got so used to listening to Al breathing at night, and then I got used to the little steel chafing sounds, and then right when I got used to the breathing again, he picked up and took off to Xing to go get educated and all that crap, so—”

“Of course you can,” Roy says.

The immediacy of it startles even him, but apparently Ed doesn’t stay surprised for any longer than he tends to stay defeated. The bright, broad grin splits his face again, and the odd flutter of relief in Roy’s chest—accompanied by some dozen much more familiar flutters of trepidation—makes it seem that he chose the right course. Perhaps he’s allowed to have that satisfaction unadulterated, just this once.

“Cool,” Ed says. “Appreciate it. Promise I’m house-trained.”

“I’m aware,” Roy says. “You slept on the couch in my office without incident on numerous occasions, including several memorable episodes where I was trying to have a conversation with you at the time.”

“The reports told you why I needed the sleep so bad,” Ed says. “Redundant for me to tell you, too.”

“Ah, yes,” Roy says. “Redundancy: the great enemy of the modern world, unrivaled foe of the orderly and efficient. Inconceivable that your boss should waste a moment of anyone’s time asking for explanations about several rather questionable expense lines where the handwriting looked somewhat more deliberately smudged than usual, as if its originator was _trying_ to make it indistinguishable in the hopes that a hopelessly overworked superior officer might just give up and sign.”

“You were never hopelessly overworked in your life until _after_ Bradley went down,” Ed says. “And then it was your own fault.”

“Slander,” Roy says.

Ed shrugs, and then the grin returns in full force. “S’not insubordination anymore, though.”

“Yes, it is,” Roy says. “And will be as long as I outrank you. It doesn’t matter if you’re a direct report or n—”

Both of Ed’s hands slap themselves over his ears, vigorously enough that the right one probably aches something awful. “ _La, la, la_ , can’t hear you; whatever you’re saying’s probably crap anyway, _sir_ , based on piles and piles of concrete scientific data I’ve collected over the years from putting up with y—”

Roy folds his glasses, tucks them into his shirt pocket, sets the paper aside, and levers himself up out of the chair. “Shall I get you some linens?”

One hand lifts, as does one eyebrow. “It’s a couch, and you’re doing me a favor. Neither of those things needs sheets.”

“Hospitality is dead, I see,” Roy says. “If only someone had sent me a memo.”

“You would’ve ignored it,” Ed says.

“Very likely,” Roy says, starting for the hall. “Humor me, just this once.”

“Really don’t, though,” Ed says, and a rustle followed by footsteps means he’s trailing. “I’ll just leak machine oil all over ’em. It’s gross. And it’s real hard to get the stains out.”

Roy sets a hand on the banister and glances back at him. “I _am_ an alchemist, Edward.”

The scowl reprises its favorite position and its fabled intensity. “I don’t want you to go to any stupid trouble. Just—I went home at lunch and fed the cats anyway, and… I’m just—it’s a pain in the ass bein’ all alone over there. So I’m putting _you_ out, when I acted like I was doing something nice for you, so—”

“You did do something nice for me,” Roy says. “Several things, one of which involved sustaining me nutritionally, which I’m told is an important element of survival most of the time.”

“Don’t be a smartass,” Ed says.

“Then don’t feel guilty for negotiating an arrangement that benefits you _slightly_ ,” Roy says.

Ed eyes him. “This is why we gotta take care of your shit,” he says. “Politics needs you.”

“Politics doesn’t need anyone,” Roy says. The first step of the staircase always feels higher than the next few, though the last four usually seem inches taller than even this one. “It certainly doesn’t need me more than I need it.”

Ed leans on the railing.

“Then I guess you’d better get your shit together,” he says.

Roy won’t let the brat wind him up—not after this pathetic excuse for a day; not after everything he crawled through to get to it in the first place.

He tops the stairs. He breathes in, and then out again. The rest is simpler, isn’t it? It has to be.

“How many pillows would you like?” he asks.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello, lovelies. ♥ Thank you more than I can say for the comments on part one!
> 
> I just want to reiterate the "There's dark shit in this fic" warning for this chapter, which in particular contains a lot of fairly blunt talk about suicide on top of the rest of it. Please don't read if you're not in a place where you can handle that, and/or let me know if you need more details to decide. ♥

He has a stack of back issues of _Amestrian Journal of Alchemy_ —as if there are any other nations that would publish such a thing—on the nightstand. He sifts through the top few, trying to find a cover that catches his attention, and ends up picking February’s for no reason except that it isn’t red. He scans the table of contents, skims through the pages, tries to focus on a promising article intently enough to _care_ —

All the arrays look like weapons. Every line bleeds out; every single suggested application could be repurposed for murder, and—why? Why is it always like this? Why are _they_ like this?

He looks at the wall, and then at the curtains, and then at the bedsheets. He takes his glasses off, polishes them gently on his nightshirt, and then looks again.

Perhaps Ed’s onto something—Ed is, after all, a touted genius; it would be unusual, though not without precedent, for him to apply his intellect to analyzing another person’s internal life. It’s not his usual arena, but his brilliance has transcended boundaries before. That might well be one of the things that Ross has set out to teach him, too—empathy.

As if Roy deserves it.

The more pertinent question is not why, but whether, Ed was right.

Roy used to care—didn’t he? He used to be capable of caring. Surely he used to page through the pile of journals and feel a flicker of, if not anticipation or eagerness, _interest_ , at least. Surely other things used to matter, used to register, used to impact him. Surely there used to be stronger, brighter, sharper feelings than the dull background throb of the fear. Surely there used to be more than just the skin-crawling hum in the back of his mind— _Move. Keep moving. Don’t let it find you. Don’t ever let it catch up._

But there’s… nothing. Is there? Nothing but the buzzing baseline of misery, half-submerged, and the periodic spikes of terror and of breath-strangling anger scrabbling to get free.

He could stand up and go downstairs and fetch the afternoon’s leftover files, but that would likely disturb Ed in the living room. For the same reason, a cup of tea is out. What else is there? He doesn’t have any particularly boring fiction lying around. He ought to change that—stroll into a bookstore, request the single most excruciatingly insipid novels that they’re legally allowed to sell. Buy out the whole stock of mediocre narratives. Drown himself in poorly-chosen words night after night until he either finds a way to papercut-slit his own throat or expires of tedium-hastened natural causes.

It occurs to him, from a logical perspective, that suicidal ideation should evoke a more visceral reaction. It should startle him that he’s thinking this—it should be scandalous, possibly; disconcerting, at the least. It should _matter_ , on some level. A part of him should panic.

But there’s nothing. He doesn’t flinch; he doesn’t falter; not a single solitary candle illuminates in his brain. No reaction. No sensation. Just the whole-being, soul-deep equivalent of a sidelong glance at what ought to be a crisis, followed by a shrug.

He’s tired. He’s just tired—that’s all he can get his hands around. It’s swallowed and smothered everything else. Sustaining his own existence is exhausting, and it leaves him with spare, fragile little slivers of energy to dedicate to dragging himself out of bed and all the way to headquarters every morning; scraps and pickings for meetings and reports and forced smiles during all the stupid conversations—

He’s not even angry, most of the time. Just tired. Just so tired that after a while, the silence echoes, and the emptiness hurts.

But not the kind of tired that will let him sleep.

That would be _easy_. Evidently, he’s not allowed to have _easy_ anymore.

He looks at the wall again, but it hasn’t noticeably changed since the last survey, so he directs his attention towards the bureau instead.

He tried reorganizing—tried moving all the furniture around; tried changing the drapes and buying new towels in a different color and altering the details to make everything look slightly different than it did before he left. It hasn’t helped. This is still his home; this is still the sanctuary that he built it into after he streaked the streets of Ishval with ash and blood.

He takes off his glasses, sets them on the nightstand, turns out his reading light, and settles down in bed. He draws the covers up, smoothes them out over his chest, adjusts them, smoothes them again, and stares up at the ceiling. He used to be able to make out flaws in the molding, even at night—didn’t he? On the list of things to torment himself about, the vision loss ranks low, though, even at his worst. He spent just enough time with absolutely nothing but the darkness to recognize how fortunate he is. A scattering of headaches and some blurred letters and the missing minutiae can’t make him ungrateful for that.

He closes his eyes and takes several deep, slow, measured breaths. He tries to think about… clouds. He envisions the bed as a cloud; dims the sun in his imagination a bit so that it won’t stimulate his brain with too much daylight; focuses on the feeling of sinking in against the cushioned surface, on the softness of the sheets and the comforter. Comfort. Yes. Solace, sanctuary, kindness, warmth. Pale and unassuming. And fluffy. Ignoring the obvious scientific fact that clouds are, in fact, conglomerations of water particles, and would likely just feel damp and vaguely unpleasant, and would not support one’s weight in the slightest, were one somehow capable of stretching out on top of one to try to sl—

Damn it.

His eyes won’t stay closed. His body aches—back, shoulders, neck—so fervently that he can almost hear its pleas for rest articulated aloud, but his brain won’t stop whirring long enough to grant him the reprieve.

He vacillates for a few moments more, attempting to convince himself that there’s a chance that he’ll simply drift off into the darkened swell of slumber if he keeps his eyes shut just a little longer, and then he gives in, chokes down the sigh, and sits up. There’s some low note of satisfaction underneath it—an _Aha, see?_ from the back of his brain. Does that make it the right choice or the wrong one? He doesn’t trust his instincts anymore.

He gets up and sets one foot cautiously in front of the other until they take him to the bathroom adjoined to the opposite end of the room. One of the downsides to living alone is that he doesn’t have the slightest idea how good the acoustics are in this house—he’s never had to hear his own activities from anywhere else within it. Will running a bath wake Ed? Surely not. Ed used to sleep like the dead when he finally settled down; it was the only time he ever stopped moving and the only thing that could quell the fire and the sass.

Nothing much for it in either case: Roy is out of options, other than tromping down the stairs to raid the kitchen or the liquor cabinet, which would make more noise much closer in any case. This might help him. It definitively didn’t hurt at least once before. Besides, if he drops off to sleep in the middle, there’s a possibility he’ll drown, and…

And he couldn’t do that—not to Ed. Ed came here as a guest: as something like a friend, or at least like a benefactor. It would be the cruelest repayment imaginable to let him discover the corpse of a man that he’s tried, more than once, to save—and to force him to do so the morning after he went out of his way to offer assistance, no less. After the life that Ed has led, after the _other_ deaths he’s witnessed, and the hundred-thousand tragedies he’s endured—

Would he be relieved? Roy’s not sure which of them that thought means to refer to—both of them, perhaps. He knows that he wouldn’t technically feel anything, seeing as how he’d be deceased, but likely the last few moments would be moderately relaxing.

Would Ed be _relieved_ , though? Would a part of him, minuscule but undeniable, be glad that Roy took himself out of this miserable picture and left the rest of them to follow their own course? Roy knows that a part of Riza would. She’s tired, too, and tireder still for having to look out for him. Tired of his stubbornness; tired of his staunch refusal to clean up his own messes when they spread too far across the floor. Tired of his unwillingness to leave the whole stupid game and free her of the old promises made when life was smaller, and simpler, and there was so much less at stake. She’d miss him, of course, genuinely; and it would be difficult for her to find another position—she’s so well-suited to the military now that she’d struggle to occupy herself with anything else if she left, but it would also be nearly impossible to find another superior who would respect her and understand her the way that he does.

But a part of her would welcome being rid of him.

Which is fair, since most of him would welcome being rid of himself.

He starts the water, dangling his fingers under the faucet until it runs scaldingly hot, and then fits the plug into the drain. He’d try to send restful thoughts in Ed’s direction, on the off-chance that his telepathic talents have increased over the years, but if he had any restful thoughts to begin with, he’d have no choice but to hoard them.

When the tub fills, he strips off his pajamas and climbs in. The water sloshes; steam rises; the heat soothes his sore muscles and sends shimmers of the threat of burning along his skin.

This is… _better_ doesn’t seem like the right word, but it’s certainly not worse. It is preferable, clearly, to lying still and staring at the wall, willing it to illuminate with some sort of message of absolution. Preferable to begging the darkness to offer him anything other than the dreams of the desert, the billows of smoke, the cinders and the scorch marks and the roasted flesh of human beings who had aspirations, once.

A quantity of water, even of proportions as modest as this, can almost silence the rest of it sometimes. It’s a trial, though, these days—to find anywhere that’s safe. Anywhere he can escape it, he should say; safety is a solace he hasn’t earned. Security is a state and a feeling that he doesn’t and won’t ever deserve; he could fill dozens of bathtubs this size with the blood he spilled with every step on those streets.

…damn. There goes a decent streak of not-quite-thinking about it.

He leans forward and wraps his arms around his knees, raising them enough to lay his cheek down on them without inhaling any of the drifting soapsuds when he breathes deeply. Ed’s right, in a manner of speaking; or right about the meat of it and wrong about the method. He has to get through this. He won’t last if it stays like this; he can’t carry this weight long-term. It will crush him. He will lose.

His options, then, are to hope that it goes away, or to do something about it. He’s not naïve enough to put much stock in the first choice, but he doesn’t think Ed’s advice was right for the second. Therapy won’t help him. _Talking_ won’t. Who the hell could he hope to talk to who could even begin to understand? Psychopaths don’t become psychiatrists. The other murderers are either locked up or like this.

It’s what he deserves. It’s all he deserves. Better. More. He should take this with both hands and hold it to his chest and thank his lucky stars that he has so much left to cherish.

He shifts, pressing his face against his soap-slicked knees—a fine fit for his eye sockets; everything lines up. Evolution is such a marvel. Human beings were built to fold themselves into abjection.

What is he going to do?

  


* * *

  


This time, he manages to stay in the bed for twenty minutes uninterrupted before the itch overcomes him. He didn’t check the locks.

He did, of course. But not well enough. Not properly. Not with the care and caution required to remember; he can’t be _certain_ that all the latches are in place. He’d like to trust himself, but that’s the unfunny sort of joke that he doesn’t bother telling anymore. He’d like to believe that it doesn’t matter, but it matters to the part of him thrashing and screeching and tearing at his insides, louder and more reckless by the second, as he lies still and vacillates.

He already checked. He walked the premises while Ed was borrowing a toothbrush—which was worthy of note insofar as it means that Ed must not have expected Roy to let him stay, or he would likely have come prepared—and went through the whole circuit of possible entry points.

He knows that he paid attention to the front door, even though he’d locked it on his way in: it was Ed’s portal of entry, as far as he can tell, so he wanted to be sure that there weren’t sections of the wood thinned by alchemy marks or any other signs of Ed’s passage. There weren’t, and he hadn’t precisely thought that there would be; Ed can exercise a great deal of finesse when he puts his mind to it, but Roy had felt compelled to look.

He doesn’t remember the rest—not clearly. Not clearly enough to know that they’re all securely shut.

And if he doesn’t _know_ —

He stifles the sigh; it’s his own fault. He has no right to regret.

He gets up and shoulders on his robe and slots his feet into his house slippers and scrubs at his eyes as he starts for the door. They’re starting to sting, but the lids aren’t heavy yet. He supposes that it’s a nice bit of irony if you squint—that his eyes are burning, that is. That—

Opening his bedroom door displaces the limp body heretofore resting against it, which rolls towards him, and his heart skitters—

But it’s—

Ed.

It is Ed, who was apparently sleeping on the floor of Roy’s hallway, propped up against his door, and has now tipped over onto his back.

Ed blinks upward. Roy blinks down.

They stare at each other in silence for a moment before Roy manages, perhaps a bit stupidly, “What are you doing?”

“Exactly what it looks like,” Ed says without moving a muscle. “What are _you_ doing?”

Roy’s brain is too busy processing Edward Elric, supine across the threshold to his bedroom, to invent a plausible lie: it automatically supplies the honest answer instead. “Checking the locks.”

“You already did,” Ed says, making no effort to move, either upright or out of the way. “I heard you.”

“I’m checking them again,” Roy says. “I was distracted whe—”

“No one’s coming after you,” Ed says.

Roy bristles despite his better judgment’s caveats; he makes himself clench his jaw and breathe twice before he responds: “That’s not the point. If you’ll just—I don’t want to step on you; would you—?”

Ed, who has, of course, long since mastered the art of following the letter of the law, scrambles upright, blanket clutched in both arms, and then proceeds not to budge a centimeter from the center of the doorway.

“Ed,” Roy says, very slowly, in case a miracle occurs, and Ed spontaneously ceases to be an indescribable pain, “will you please let me by?”

“No,” Ed says.

Nothing else for it. He’s too tired—bone-tired; his brain’s a beehive—to process much in the way of guilt for how he shifts to put one hand on Ed’s shoulder and start to push—

“Because I’m gonna do it,” Ed says. He catches Roy’s wrist between his hands—eyes hard, grip harder. “Let me do it.”

Roy writhes, for all the good it does; even the left hand’s stronger than he can slip out of. “I—”

“Trust me,” Ed says. “What are the things you check?”

Roy tugs, meaninglessly, against the trap. He supposes that that’s par for the course by now. Does a doomed effort count for something anymore? “It’s really—”

“What are the things you check?” Ed asks again, louder this time.

Roy tries to stare him down, but that’s a lost cause, too. The Elric Brothers taught _him_ a thing or two about the power of sheer pigheadedness, which was a marvel in its own right.

He draws a deep breath and lets it out slowly. “There are five windows downstairs,” he says. “Kitchen, living room, library, and two in the front room. All of them should be latched. Front door, back door; three deadbolts on the front, two on the back.”

Ed doesn’t say _There’s no number of locks that can keep this outside_. He doesn’t say _Deadbolts won’t raise the dead_. He doesn’t say _You’re even more paranoid than I thought, aren’t you?_

He just nods, eyes slightly distant, filmed with the haze that Roy recognizes from every other time that Ed has paused to file some information in his capacious brain.

“Back in a jiffy,” Ed says, turning on his heel.

“Two jiffies is perfectly acceptable,” Roy says, feeling awash and adrift and unnerved in the extreme.

Ed’s not supposed to—what? Enable him? Possibly this is meant to be a gentle step ushering him in the right direction; a willingness to outsource his own anxieties and believe that someone else can assuage them probably signifies some positive effect. But Roy doesn’t know yet if this is even going to work; and if it does, it’s not because it’s _him_ making some sort of progress. It’s because it’s Ed. Any idiot who’s ever crossed paths with Edward Elric—anyone who’s shared half a dozen words with him—would know that the important things are safer in Ed’s hands than in one’s own. Letting Ed temporarily take the reins of Roy’s life does not indicate an improvement; Ed’s far worthier of them than he is. If anything, this is a step backwards, isn’t it?

Roy’s not sure anymore.

He supposes that it doesn’t matter anyway.

They both know that Ed, despite his semi-intentional-depending-upon-whom-you-ask destructive tendencies, is more than capable of moving quietly when the occasion calls for it. Apparently this is no such occasion: he stomps his way through a circuit of the downstairs rooms so audibly, in fact, that one might suspect that he was deliberately marking his progress for someone who might be listening, to make it as evident as possible that he’d fulfilled every task asked of him.

Roy considers that perhaps he should have spent this time lying very quietly in bed, determinedly thinking restful thoughts, but it would be indescribably rude to send a houseguest on his own errand and then immediately curl up under the covers, regardless of the particulars. Better, then, to continue to wait with his arms folded as Ed comes back up the stairs.

“We’re all clear,” Ed says, holding his captured blanket to his chest. “Everything was done up. The one in the living room was a little loose, though, so I tightened it while I was there.”

The shudder of relief that goes through Roy threatens to eliminate all of his cartilage, which would do worse than just letting his shoulders slump like they want to; it would take him to his knees.

“Thank you,” he says. “I appreciate your thoroughn—”

Ed squints at him. “Why are you so wet?”

It takes every last iota of Roy’s battered willpower to resist the urge to twist that into an innuendo. “I took a bath.”

“Oh, right,” Ed says. “That explains the water noise. I thought maybe you were brushin’ your teeth _real_ good. Gotta have the shiniest fake smile in town and all that shit.”

He must have great faith indeed in Roy’s dental hygiene; presumably that was when he sneaked upstairs unnoticed under the cover of the faucet running, which means he can’t possibly have mistaken how long the sound went on.

“Right before bed?” Ed asks next. “Isn’t your hair gonna stick up funny?”

“I sincerely hope not,” Roy says. “It usually doesn’t.”

“Huh,” Ed says. “Mine always does.”

“Well,” Roy says, feeling helpless—but in a small way; in a good way; in a way that’s familiar, and is it possible that that’s part of the point? “At least if unruly hair-drying takes place, it’ll be Saturday, and you’ll be the only one available to see it and mock me mercilessly for having the audacity to let it dry while I sleep.”

“I love first mocking rights,” Ed says. “Sounds like a plan.”

He pauses, and then he glances around himself, shifting his feet. He wraps the blanket tighter in both arms. His eyes light on a new target, and he starts sidling towards it, as if Roy’s sight has degraded enough that anything short of violent motion will escape him.

“Hey,” Ed says, dropping onto the settee in the corner that usually houses half a week of laundry in the possibly-rewearable category at any given time. “Can I sleep here? S’easier all around, really, if—”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Roy says, but he doesn’t wait for Ed’s face to fall before he reaches over and pulls back the coverlet on the other side of his mattress. “This is a king-sized bed. While I’m aware that you won’t need the _full_ extent of—”

“Rude,” Ed says.

“Tragically,” Roy says, “reality often is.”

Ed’s eyes narrow. “This is a trick, isn’t it?” They widen again, rather abruptly, and then he points a metal finger at Roy. “Do you snore? I bet you snore.”

“Only when I’m sick,” Roy says.

“I don’t believe you,” Ed says, folding his arms across his chest like a barricade. “Bet you’re a friggin’ lumberjack, and you’re just trying to fool me to get revenge for me invading your house and all that.”

“As invasions go,” Roy says, sitting on the edge of the bed to emphasize the gentle way the mattress bounces, “it’s been remarkably pleasant so far.” He runs a palm across the comforter, flattening a fold. “Why would I lie to you?”

“Why wouldn’t you?” Ed asks. “You’ve been lying to me since I was ten.”

“Only about the important things,” Roy says.

“Everything’s important,” Ed says. “At least when it comes to the truth. That’s the hard part.”

“Ed,” Roy says. “The bed is more than big enough for both of us together, and it would be absurd to make you sleep on the sofa after everything you’ve done for me today. The laws of hospitality simply wouldn’t allow it; civilization itself would be on the verge of collapse; so on and so forth. We can skip ahead to the part in this conversation where I say ‘I insist’ four times in a row whenever you’d like.”

Ed hugs the blanket closer, glowering. “I don’t wanna impose. I mean—any more than I have to. I’m imposing less over here.”

“Consider the exchanges involved,” Roy says. “Including the subtler ones, such as the fact that if I let you sleep there, or on the floor in the hallway, or on the couch downstairs, which evidently wasn’t doing you any good, I won’t be able to look myself in the mirror and call myself a gentleman ever again.”

The glowering takes on a nice sardonic edge. “Is that part of your morning routine?”

“Yes,” Roy says. “Daily. Sometimes I embellish. I’m considering investing in a monocle and a top hat so that I can really sell the image.”

“To yourself,” Ed says.

“That’s the most important part,” Roy says. “If I don’t buy my own bullshit, how could I possibly expect anyone else to believe it?”

Ed extracts one arm from his blanket tangle to rub at his forehead. “I hate it so much when you make sense. Can I blame that on the fact that it’s late?”

“I’ll let you get away with it,” Roy says. “Just this once.”

“Man,” Ed says, cautiously standing from the couch and very nearly tiptoeing his way towards the bed. “If I had a couple cens for every time you’d said that—”

“You’d have a couple cens,” Roy says, standing again, but shifting well out of the way—which puts him in a good position for abandoning his robe by hanging it over the door of the wardrobe in any case.

“You used to let me get away with all kinds of shit,” Ed says. He pauses next to the bed, on the side of the mattress less marred by evidence of Roy’s recent tossing and turning—the half closer to the door—and looks down at the slightly rumpled sheets as though they might house venomous reptiles. “You sure?”

“I’m sure,” Roy says. “And of course I did. But I never _admitted_ it.”

Ed rolls his eyes extravagantly—but then, at long last, he relinquishes the blanket, climbs up into the bed, and settles down, tugging the covers up to his chest.

“Comfortable?” Roy asks, returning very slowly so that he won’t startle Ed right back out after all of that work.

“Yeah,” Ed says. “Physically, anyway. S’a nice bed.”

“I try,” Roy says. He peels the blankets back and slides in, which promptly directs Ed’s attention away from him, towards the nightstand, which—

“Whoa,” Ed says. “You—holy shit, you’ve been holding out on me.” He sits up and snatches as many issues of the _Amestrian Journal of Alchemy_ as he can fit in both hands. “Damn!” he says, fanning out the first few, eyes flicking up and down the cover pages. “They must be paying you all right over there; this subscription ain’t cheap.”

“It’s what I buy instead of food,” Roy says.

“Reasonable,” Ed says, paging carefully through the one that Roy had been attempting to use to coax his brain towards sleep. “But tough to sustain in the long run. You mind if I take a look at these tomorrow?”

“Be my guest,” Roy says. “As you can tell, I’m hardly keeping up with them. If you’d like to borrow any, you’re welcome to.”

“They’re mostly crap anyway,” Ed says, but the shining of his eyes belies the pessimism a bit. “I used to pick up old copies from used bookstores out on missions and stuff—” That’s interesting—not because it’s out of character, but because Roy never saw a trace of those on the reports, despite the fact that Edward Elric’s budgets often included lines for mandatory ice cream breaks and investigation of suspicious popcorn vendors. “—and a lot of the data’s… I mean, obviously they’re trying to get published, more than they’re trying to be _right_ , but… still. Makes you think. And that’s kind of valuable in and of itself, right?”

“I like to think so,” Roy says, which is perhaps more honest than he ought to be. Maybe he’s finally getting tired after all.

“Yeah,” Ed says, contentedly, and then he stacks the journals on the table again, cautious of the metal hand. “Anyway—cool. You ready to sleep now?”

“I’m not sure,” Roy says.

Ed snorts, settles, and closes his eyes, as if it’s just that easy. Possibly, for him, it is. Possibly, for people whom the shadows don’t chase—people who don’t deserve it, invite it, court it every moment and make it worse—

“Did you ever have trouble?” Roy asks, attempting to lie as still as he can manage, so that at least he won’t shake the bed. “Sleeping, that is. When you were younger.”

“When I was wracked with guilt and angry all the time, you mean?” Ed asks without opening his eyes.

It occurs to Roy that all of this was a terrible mistake.

Too late.

“Ah,” he says. “Yes. I suppose.”

“Sometimes,” Ed says, thoughtfully. “I dunno. I guess being run off my feet half the time didn’t hurt.”

“I imagine not,” Roy says. The combination of trauma and constant pressure probably hadn’t hurt either—Roy is feeling marginally too kind tonight to speculate about stress and stunted growth.

“You could take up running,” Ed says.

“I did,” Roy says. “Several years ago.”

“You could take up running further,” Ed says.

Roy makes a noncommittal noise, which he feels is rather charitable, actually, considering the remarkable unhelpfulness of the suggestion.

“We could drink,” Ed says. “A lot.”

“I’ve tried that,” Roy says, which he will admit is a rather precious way to phrase _I’ve dabbled somewhat extensively in alcoholism_. “It reduces the quality of the sleep enough over time that it cancels out the benefits.”

“We could get high,” Ed says. “Like, _really_ high.”

“I’m not sure that’s a good idea,” Roy says.

“Don’t tell me,” Ed says. “You’ve tried that, too.”

“No comment,” Roy says.

“Jeez,” Ed says. “It’s just like you to have a secret past of actually being interesting and just never _tell_ anybody. Well—fine. You want me to tell you a really boring story?”

Roy gazes, somewhat hopelessly he has to admit, at the pale wash of the ceiling above them. “It’s worth a shot.”

“Okay,” Ed says. “So back home—in Resembool, I mean—there’s this cow who belongs to the neighbor. Her name is Phyllis. The cow, not the neighbor.”

“What’s the neighbor’s name?” Roy asks.

“Mrs. Dunford,” Ed says. “She’s okay, except for the cow.”

“Phyllis,” Roy says.

“Yeah,” Ed says. “Stop talking; you’re using the language centers of your brain on top of the listening parts and stimulating it.”

“That is the most magnanimous phrasing of ‘shut up’ that I have ever heard,” Roy says.

“Shut up,” Ed says.

“That’s a bit more familiar,” Roy says.

“Do you want to hear the story, or not?” Ed asks.

Roy fights hard to contain the grin. “I’m not sure. You said it was boring.”

“The whole _point_ is it’s supposed to be boring,” Ed says. “It’s for your benefit, you asshole.”

Roy mimes zipping his mouth shut and then tries to settle on the pillows in a way that’s comfortable but still gives him a view of Ed’s facial expressions, which are delightfully overstated even in the half-dark.

“Better,” Ed says. “Okay, so—Phyllis. The cow. So when Al’n I got back home, we started taking a lot of walks around the countryside and stuff, y’know. First because there was nothing else to do, and second because we were trying to work our way up from muscle atrophy to… not-muscle atrophy. He was still on the crutches at that point, and it hurt a lot. He’d cry, and I’d freak out, but he’d be _glad_ he was crying, because he was so excited that he could feel pain again, and I kept telling him not to start associating those things with each other, or he’d end up with weird kinks.”

“That’s not weird,” Roy says.

“You were shutting up,” Ed says.

“I’m afraid I can’t let this injustice stand,” Roy says.

“Whatever,” Ed says. “That’s not the point anyway; the point is that I didn’t want my poor fucking brother to enjoy it when his body hurt and start to think that that was normal and not be able to report regular amounts of pain, and for us to never know whether he was healthy or not ever again. I don’t care about his kinks.”

“Obviously not,” Roy says. “That’s why you mentioned it.”

“Shut _up_ ,” Ed says.

“I’m trying,” Roy says.

“You are _not_ ,” Ed says. “Just—listen. Okay. Me and Al—we’re taking a walk. A constitutional. A… whatever. Through the fields. And it’s not… it’s really different out there, I dunno how much of it you saw from East City—property isn’t treated the same, because there’s more than enough of it to go around, so, y’know, you put up fences and stuff, but the lines between your place and your neighbor’s aren’t as big a deal. Everybody knows everybody anyway, so if something were to happen, it’s like… y’know, they’ll turn up on your grandma’s doorstep with a pie and tell her you fucked up, and nobody wants that, so it’s sort of self-enforcing. So nobody at all minded if our walks took us around past their place, or through their yard, or near their livestock, or whatever. Everybody was so damn happy to see Al for the first time in so many years that they probably would’ve let us get away with anything we wanted to get away with anyway, which is actually sort of a shame, ’cause for once we weren’t even up to anything.”

“Are you sure this isn’t a fantasy story?” Roy asks. “That premise is difficult to imagine.”

“You’re the worst shutter-upper I’ve ever met,” Ed says.

“May I put that on my résumé?” Roy asks.

“Like you’ll ever get another job,” Ed says. “Anyway. So we’re walking. And we’re going through Mrs. Dunford’s field where Phyllis the cow usually hangs out. And Phyllis is, like… half the time, she’s mean, and you’re not sure if she’s gonna kick you; and the other half, she’s way too friendly, and she wants to lick your face. Either way, I don’t want her anywhere near Al and his convalescing bones and his fragile immune system, right? So I’m on high alert here looking for this stupid cow, and I’ve got one hand on Al’s arm to try to make sure he’s still walkin’ steady, because the ground’s all bumpy, and there’s cow-chewed grass growing every which way, and cow patties all over the ground, and all that idyllic pastoral crap. And then we see her.”

Roy lowers his voice to make it as ominous as possible when he whispers, dutifully: “ _Phyllis_.”

“Phyllis,” Ed says. “Only she doesn’t look very mean or very friendly today. She looks really unhappy, and she’s lying on the ground giving us the bovine version of puppy eyes, and as I grab Al’s arm to make him stop—because of course he wants to go right over to her, _instantly_ , even though she’s probably killed a man before—she makes this totally tragic lowing moo noise, right at us. And I’m like—‘She’s trying to lure us into a false sense of security. She wants to kill us and eat us.’ And Al’s like, ‘Brother, she’s an herbivore.’ And I’m like, ‘Then she wants to kill us for sport.’ And Al’s like, ‘I’m going over there.’ So of course I have to go with him.”

“The most dutiful brother alive,” Roy says, “as always.”

“Shut it,” Ed says.

“It was a compliment,” Roy says.

“What part of ‘shut it’ is escaping you?” Ed asks.

Roy pretends to button his lips closed this time, as if a different pantomime will fool either of them into believing him.

“Thank you,” Ed says. “So there we are, in the middle of this stupidly big old field, and Al’s heading _towards_ the murder-cow as fast as he can go, and I’m trying to watch the ground to make sure he doesn’t take a header, and all of a sudden he just _screams_ —so I panic, obviously, and I start asking where it hurts and what happened and trying to check him for injuries, but he’s just pointing at Phyllis. Because it’s not him that’s bleeding; it’s the damn cow. And Al’s all, ‘Brother, we have to do something! We can’t leave her in her hour of need! Oh, the poor thing,’ yada yada, you know the drill—and then he stops, and he stares, and he gasps so loud I think that this time he _has_ to be hurt, so I start looking again. And he goes ‘Brother, I don’t think she’s dying—I think she’s calving.’”

It’s fortunate that Ed pauses there, because Roy needs a few seconds to process.

“I know,” Ed says. “Who would even say that word out loud, in real time, as part of a conversation? Other than you, I mean. But before I can tell him he’s a weirdo, he grabs my arm and gives me the big, huge, urgent eyes and goes, ‘You have to go get Winry!’ And I’m like, ‘Why? Is the calf gonna need a new target to start out with after Phyllis kills us?’, and he gets all offended, and he’s like, ‘ _No_ , she knows how to deal with things like this!’, and I’m like, ‘That’s sexist,’ and he’s like, ‘ _No_ , we’re just useless. Go get Winry, and do it _now_.’”

“Oh, dear,” Roy says.

“Yeah,” Ed says. “Or ‘holy cow’, if you wanna be species-specific. So I’m running back, and like I said, the ground’s crap on this field, I dunno what Mrs. Dunford’s family did to piss off the real estate agents back in, like, 1801 or whatever, but I’m having to jump over potholes and dodge these huge thickets of thistles and all kinds of stuff, and the fence is falling apart everywhere, and I know that if I break my right ankle, Al’ll kill me, and if I break the left one, Winry will. So I’m trying to run fast and careful at the same time, which is pretty much impossible, but finally I see our house, so I start yelling, but I’m out of breath, so I’m not yelling very loud, so I get all the way to the door and start bangin’ on it, and Winry throws it open in my face like, ‘ _What_?’, and I just go ‘ _Phyllis_!’, and she looks at me like… well, like you’d expect. So I stand there and pant for a minute and try to explain it all between gasps and shit, and she’s like, ‘Ed, cows give birth in the wild all the time,’ and I’m like, ‘Cows have been domesticated since forever; they don’t do anything in the wild,’ and she’s like, ‘You know what I mean!’, and I’m like, ‘Yeah, but Al’s freaking out,’ and she just puts both hands over her face and sighs so loud I think she’s going to rupture some alveoli, and then she puts her hands on her hips and just says, ‘ _Fine_ ,’ and goes and grabs a couple of rags from her workshop stash and then comes back and grabs my arm and goes, ‘Show me where,’ and then we have to go all the way back.”

“Did both of your ankles make it unscathed?” Roy asks.

“Mostly,” Ed says. “It was sorta touch and go for a minute when we hit a rabbit warren, but I pulled through. Okay. So. We get back to Phyllis. Al’s all curled up with her and stroking her head and talking to her quietly and stuff, because of course he is. I don’t know if it’s working, because I don’t have a damn degree in cow psychology, but it looks like she’s sort of calmed down. Winry just rolls her sleeves right up, and then she turns to me and eyes me for a second like I’m suspicious or something, and then she’s like, ‘Go tell Mrs. Dunford that she’s about to have another cow,’ and I’m like, ‘Why?’, and she’s like, ‘Because I said so,’ so I figure either she thinks I’m gonna be in the way, or I’m gonna do bad commentary like a sports announcer, or I can’t handle the blood, which means a thirty-three percent chance that she’s trying to be nice, so I take off running again to go tell Mrs. Dunford about something that’s gonna happen whether she knows about it or not.”

“Ah,” Roy says, idly, more to encourage Ed to pause for breath than because he really has anything to add. “The true quandary—if a cow gives birth in a field, and no one tells Mrs. Dunford, does she still get to name the calf?”

“Yes,” Ed says. “You’re skippin’ ahead, but the rest is just me running, _more_ , and then realizing that obviously Mrs. Dunford isn’t running with me, and then running back to hang on to her elbow so she won’t trip on her own damn property, and then putting up with getting called a ‘nice young man’ for it, and then getting back right in time to see Al cooing over this giant gangly baby cow, and Winry just sort of patting his back and looking like she’s ready to move back to Rush Valley, like, tomorrow.”

“What did Mrs. Dunford name it?” Roy asks.

Ed sighs, loudly and feelingly.

“Phil,” he says.

Roy blinks. “But—”

“Yeah,” Ed says. “Phil, son of Phyllis. I dunno. People are a little weird out there.”

Roy tries to make the next question sound natural instead of prying. Fortunately, he has quite a lot of experience with similar quandaries in diplomatic situations. “Was that the last straw for Winry? I understand she’s back in Rush Valley now.”

“Don’t think that was it,” Ed says. “I think me’n Al lying around the house all day complaining about how we’d read all our books four times probably was. She’s kinda like us in that way, y’know? Needs to be doing stuff. Solving problems. Fixing things. Or people, I guess. She kinda does both.”

“As do you,” Roy says.

Ed snorts. “I push paper and try not to blow up buildings. I think she’s got the edge.” He shifts enough to give Roy a respectable side-eye. “Okay, that’s the best I got. Boring enough for you?”

“It wasn’t boring,” Roy says. “It was nice.”

Ed stares at him—he feels it more than he sees it.

“Shit,” Ed says, faintly. “Mustang, you’re _hopeless_.”

Roy finds himself laughing hard enough to shake the bed, and that—

That might just be worth never sleeping again.

“Oh, great,” Ed says. “Of course when you finally crack up, it’s on _my_ watch. That’s just like you. Have you ever been helpful a single damn day in your life?”

Roy manages to corral his breathing enough that by the time that he’s folded both hands behind his head, his voice is steady enough to speak with: “I sure hope not. I’ve worked so hard to be an unremitting pain.”

“Have you tried being an unremitting sleeping pain?” Ed asks.

“Tried, yes,” Roy says. “Succeeded… less often.”

“Just close your eyes,” Ed says, and the quality of his voice has changed—subtly, but it’s softer, and the words come slower, and there’s a lilt to it that Roy’s never detected before. “And lie real still, and… just… let it be. Doesn’t have to be permanent or anything. Just start picking the little things off and letting them go. You don’t need all of them. The wind can have a couple. Just let ’em go.”

“Are you trying to hypnotize me?” Roy asks.

“This is plan Y,” Ed says, in that same fascinating variation on his voice. “Plan Z involves me kicking your ass to Xing, where Al can kick your ass again on my behalf.”

“I’m going to use an executive veto on that plan,” Roy says. “I refuse to have my ass kicked more than once per day per family. It simply won’t work.”

“Guess you’d better sleep, then,” Ed says.

“I’m not sure you understand the concept of a ‘veto’,” Roy says.

“I’m not sure you understand the concept of an ass-kicking,” Ed says.

“Why aren’t _you_ sleeping?” Roy says.

“Because I know you,” Ed says. “The day you follow a good example instead of doing the opposite is the same day the sun burns out.”

Roy considers. “That’s… fair.”

“Can’t blame you,” Ed says, vaguely thoughtfully. “It’s sort of scientific. Doing the opposite just to find out what happens, I mean.”

“Sort of,” Roy says.

Silence settles for a few moments, and he lets it. Perhaps Ed’s given up. Perhaps he’s tired after all. Perhaps—

“Hey,” Ed says, folding his hands on his chest—which, strangely, registers as… cute. Presumably it’s because of the mismatched fingers, but Roy’s a bit bewildered all the same. “Is this weird?”

“Only if one of us decides that it’s weird,” Roy says.

“Bullshit,” Ed says. “Things can be objectively weird.”

“That’s not true,” Roy says. “The concept of weirdness is extremely subjective—and enormously influenced by cultural precedent and societal pressure. Even if the local majority might judge this to be weird, it almost certainly wouldn’t be categorized that way somewhere else.”

“ _You’re_ weird,” Ed says.

“Also subjective,” Roy says. “Though almost universally agreed-upon.”

“S’okay,” Ed says, gazing at the ceiling. “I’m weird, too. Most interesting people are.”

“Not the first word I’d pick to describe you,” Roy says, “but accurate enough.”

Ed snorts.

Then he goes quiet.

Then he goes un-quiet again, long enough to say, “Feelin’ sleepy yet?”

“Not in the slightest,” Roy says.

“Damn,” Ed says. “Fine. Be that way.”

“I struggle to be any other, I’m afraid,” Roy says.

“Smartass,” Ed says. He sighs again. “Well—I mean, that’s all I got. Sorry. You’re just gonna have to lie quiet and count sheep and hope for the best like the rest of us at this point.”

“Thank you,” Roy says. This late in the conversation, Ed may not realize that he means it, but maybe it’ll sink in. “Goodnight, Ed.”

“G’night, Mustang,” Ed says. “Remember it’s sheep you’re counting, not cows.”

“Are the sheep also slightly malicious?” Roy asks. “May I name them?”

“Go to sleep,” Ed says.

Roy shifts and tugs on the blankets, more to make some noises that sound like concession than because he expects it to make any difference. “Goodnight,” he says again.

“This is like getting off the phone with Winry,” Ed says. “’Night.”

Everything in Roy wants to respond by pointing out that Ed’s been no better at ending this conversation than he has, but he bites the inside of his cheek and holds his peace. He owes that much. He owes quite a bit more.

  


* * *

  


He wakes to a dim room, and the other side of the bed is empty. The dreams linger indistinctly—a blood blister inside his head; they’ve seeped into memory as a wash of red and black and a purplish muddle in between. He doesn’t want to touch the surface; if they burst open, the risk of infection—

He sweeps his open hand across the side of the bed Ed vacated—the side that Ed would have vacated, that is, presuming that Roy didn’t invent that entire series of events last night. That’s one of the delightful little tidbits that he didn’t think to expect: when the past and the present keep mingling in his head and dragging tendrils of imagination in alongside them, he can’t trust any of his own recollections.

The covers were shoved back, though. There’s a head-shaped dent on the pillow. And there’s a trace of what might just be machine oil smudged on the sheet.

He could, of course, be fabricating all of this evidence, too, and plunging himself into a potentially endless spiral of manufactured memories. Is his brain stable enough to recognize the difference anymore? He’ll have to draw the line somewhere, won’t he? He’ll have to start verifying his own observations against other people’s reactions to cross-check. That sounds like a pleasant way to pass the time in a position where he already feels beleaguered and unbalanced whenever he’s faced with anyone other than his team. Nothing could possibly go wrong.

There’s an easier way to resolve this particular philosophical dispute, however, and the longer that he can continue to play keep-away with his clouded head and the depths of the paranoia, the better.

He rolls to the edge of the mattress, puts his feet on the floor, puts his weight on them, and stands. So far, so stable; he shoulders on his robe and heads downstairs.

The smells and noises emanating from the kitchen are too faint to have originated from any serious cooking, which is moderately puzzling until he steps in to find Ed sitting at his kitchen table with a plate full of last night’s leftovers.

“What?” Ed says, with his mouth full, brandishing a fork. “You didn’t have anything else. Not even _cereal_ , which I didn’t know was legal. ’Sides, there’s egg rolls. Egg rolls have egg. So they’re breakfast.”

“Is that how it works?” Roy asks.

“Hey,” Ed says. “When you start keepin’ food around your own damn house, you can make the rules. There’s more in the oven for you. I couldn’t get ’em to fit in the toaster.”

Roy had forgotten that he has a toaster, and swallowing that comment deprives him of the intellectual capacity required to generate another. Hopefully his de facto keeper will assume that the prospect of food left him speechless, since that sounds like the sort of thing that might happen periodically to Ed.

“The thing I don’t get,” Ed says when Roy returns with a few choice selections from a very warm casserole dish full of egg rolls, “is how you’ve survived this long when you’re on a taking-care-of-yourself strike.” He plants his left elbow on the table—which is poor manners, it should be noted—and his chin on his hand, and then raises both eyebrows meaningfully. Roy makes a point of pretending to be interested in his something-like-breakfast. “Doesn’t make sense. Which supports my theory that it didn’t used to be nearly this bad, and the trip to Ishval sent you off a cliff, and this is the rock bottom part, where you just can’t give enough of a shit to do anything different, and part of you’s just sort of waiting and hoping that maybe you’ll die and get out of having to deal with anything.”

Roy chokes violently on breakfast egg roll, which is not an iota more dignified or enjoyable than it sounds.

Ed stands and darts around the end of the table to start smacking the center of his back. Roy supposes that he should be grateful that the blunt force instrument of choice is the left fist, rather than the right, but it still isn’t helping.

“I’ll take that as a ‘maybe’,” Ed says, calmly with just a touch of wistfulness, like they were just discussing the weather, and it may rain on Roy’s proverbial parade. “Sorry, I guess. I know straightforward’s not really your thing, but I figure we might as well just get all the cards on the table so we can figure out how to play.”

Roy recovers enough to wheeze out the obvious question: “‘We’?”

“Well, yeah,” Ed says, and the pounding has definitely resolved into something more like patting. “Somebody’s gotta bail your ass out, and you’re really good at hiding, so if I try to foist it off on somebody else, you’ll just trick ’em. Only reason I got in on it so quick is because I was in the right place at the right time. And that’s fine—it’s equivalent, if you look at it right; you fixed a lot of my problems whether I liked it or not back when Al’n I were kids, so it’s my turn. And you’re just gonna have to deal with it.”

“Charming,” Roy says.

“I get that a lot,” Ed says. He makes what must be a parting pat and then goes to crouch in front of the oven and examine the remaining egg rolls. “Are you still hungry? You must still be hungry. You haven’t had anything yet.”

“I was trying,” Roy says.

The grin that Ed flashes over his shoulder is cruel and unusual punishment—cruel Roy can handle; the unusual part is what twists his guts into complicated knots.

“Try harder,” Ed says.

Ed opens the oven and snatches up another eggroll with his metal fingers—the imperviousness to heat must, pun utterly intended and not regretted in the slightest, come in handy at times—and brings it over to the table to deposit it on Roy’s plate. Then he reprises his previous position in the chair opposite Roy’s, but with both elbows on the table this time. Roy suspects that he may not be allowed to leave until he’s finished eating his something-like-breakfast, which is even more unfair given that he hasn’t had any coffee yet, and his brain can’t begin to contemplate complex problems like escape routes until cup number two.

“What did you like before?” Ed asks. “Before all of it—before the military shit’d ever crossed your mind. What did you like to do?”

Roy swallows, hesitates, casts his mind back into the murky waters, tries to trawl.

“I—don’t know,” he manages.

“Oh, come on,” Ed says, leaning forward. He folds his arms on the table, tilts his head, and arches an eyebrow. “You had to have… I dunno. Hobbies. Ideas. What’d you do for fun?”

“Nothing,” Roy says. He draws a deep breath, holds it, lets it out slowly, and leans back into his chair. He rubs his eyes; surely… surely there was something. Once. “I liked… alchemy. Girls. Jazz, I suppose. But the jazz might have been primarily to impress the girls.”

“You would,” Ed says. “Why am I not surprised you were doing the whole bullshit-smokescreen thing pretty much as soon as you could talk?”

“Some talents we hone to a cutting edge,” Roy says, heaving himself up out of the chair; “others we’re born with already sharpened. Can I get you something to drink to tide you over until coffee?”

“That’s bullshit, too,” Ed says. “Talent’s never any more than ten percent of it. _Maybe_ fifteen. The rest’s just being too fucking stubborn to quit no matter how hard it gets, and putting more time into it than anybody else. Natural capacity can help, but it doesn’t always. Water’d be great.”

“That’s rather rich,” Roy says, crossing to the cabinets and selecting a glass, “coming from one of the world’s premiere geniuses.”

Ed snorts. “Mine’s ninety-five percent stubbornness. Trust me.”

“I hate to be the bearer of bad news,” Roy says, “but it is an objective fact that you are staggeringly brilliant.”

“Whatever,” Ed says. Roy plunks a glass down in front of him and then sits down again. He’ll work his way up to the coffee. It is remarkably difficult to make when you haven’t had any because you haven’t made it yet. “Thanks,” Ed says. “What about chess? You used to play chess, didn’t you?”

Roy dissects the innards of an eggroll with his fork, which, upon further consideration, is probably not a good way to encourage himself to consume the thing. “The actual game? Only… rather casually. Unless you’re speaking in metaphor, in which case I still do, more or less every moment.”

“Asshole,” Ed says, which is starting to sound very familiar. “You know what I mean. So—teach me how to play chess. It’ll be fun.”

Roy stares at him.

“Trust me,” Ed says. “It’s better than trying to get me to enjoy jazz.”

“Jazz is much easier to enjoy,” Roy says.

“Why?” Ed says. “Because it’s passive, or because it doesn’t involve me complaining the whole time about any rule I think is illogical?”

“A bit of each,” Roy says.

“Don’t be a chicken,” Ed says. He smacks one hand down on the tabletop, palm flat—the left one, fortunately; but Roy’s nerves clench desperately, and his body jerks regardless. “All right,” Ed says, and if he noticed Roy’s reaction, he refrains from commenting, and perhaps that’s a blessing to count on the dwindling list. “Today’s plan is that we’re gonna go out and buy you some damn groceries; and then you’re going to teach me how to play chess; and then if we’ve got time left, and we’re both alive, we can go find some jazz somewhere that you can passively enjoy while I think about the acoustics of the shapes of stupid-looking instruments. Okay?”

Roy collects a few shreds of eggroll filling on his fork and attempts to determine whether he’s up to eating them simply by gazing at the way they splay across the tines. “I’m… not sure I have a choice.”

“You don’t,” Ed says. “Which makes it easy.”

“Is that how it works?” Roy asks.

Ed smirks at him, and this boy—this young man, Roy should think; if he ever was a boy, it barely lasted, and it left only a steely will and a strain of mischief in its wake—is far more dangerous than anybody seems to understand. “Is now.”

“Well, then,” Roy says. “‘Okay’ it is.”

  


* * *

  


Ed is good with groceries and terrible at chess. The groceries register as a bit of a surprise until Roy reconsiders—Ed has been an incisive, analytical chemist since an age at which most children are still sussing out how to tie their shoes; and he applies the same critical eye, sheer pragmatism, and fearlessness about combining disparate elements to the contents of the market. It’s also worth noting that he probably has a great deal of practice nowadays: Alphonse was functionally under house arrest for the first several months while he reestablished his muscle tone and his immune system both, and Roy has a hunch about who tackled the shopping with a combination of wild creativity and brute-force rational thought.

The end result, whatever the specific history, is that Ed selects a remarkably healthsome variety of food on a spectrum of perishability, such that he’s sketched out a basic timeline for a week of meals before they’ve even reached the checkout.

The other kind of checking, however, gives him quite a bit more trouble.

“It doesn’t make sense,” Ed says of a game renowned worldwide as a logic challenge made manifest. He holds the offending piece up between his fingers as if Roy will either take it away or take pity on him. “First off, if they wanted it to be a horse instead of a knight, they should’ve called it a horse. Calling shit stuff it’s not is how we get into so much trouble as a species. Second, every single other piece in this entire game moves linearly. Why the _hell_ does this one jump?”

“On behalf of the game’s approximately two thousand years of rich character and history,” Roy says, “I’m very sorry that they didn’t consult you before they set down the rules.”

Ed pulls a face, but the twist of his mouth makes it obvious that he’s trying not to laugh. “Clearly they should’ve, because I would’ve told them that this part’s stupid.”

Roy sits back and folds his hands. “You don’t think that it enhances the game to have one piece that can surprise the others and forces you to consider alternate lines of attack?”

The pout settles into a grimace. “You know me and my shit. I just think people should come at you face-to-face and be real about it, and we’d all have a lot less problems.”

Roy could checkmate him at precisely this instant, but announcing as much would be rather unkind. He’ll have other opportunities—likely more of them than he could possibly want. It comes as no surprise at all that Ed is terrible at this game: winning at chess depends primarily on ruthless, strategic sacrifice, which is anathema to Ed’s personality on a fundamental level.

“We could take the knights off the board,” Roy says. “Pardon me—the horses.”

“You can’t remove a component of the game and call it the same thing,” Ed says. He pushes his hair back off of his forehead with his left hand, staring at the board. Roy’s wearing his glasses, which is why he notices, for the very first time, that there are scattered freckles decorating the heights of Ed’s cheekbones—just a few, like tiny constellations, hidden again when Ed drops his hand, and the bangs fall between and cast their shadow on his skin. “Okay,” he says. “Fine.” Before Roy can inquire, very politely, as to what has earned the adjective, Ed touches the tip of his left index finger to the head of his queen, rocking her back and forth on the square she occupies, and his eyes flick towards Roy’s rook.

“Mm,” Roy says.

Ed’s eyes dart to Roy—and stay on Roy, the corners of his mouth turning down.

“Stop that,” Ed says. “If you wanna play poker, we can play fucking poker, but I’m not gonna play poker and call it chess.”

Roy can’t help grinning. “Is that your way of saying that you’d prefer cards?”

“No,” Ed says, and he moves his remaining bishop instead. “But I do need to go feed the cats, so hurry up and put me out of my misery.”

Roy tries to hold the grin in place, but something in him just plummeted. How humiliating. “Ah. Well, ravenous as they are, the longer you wait, the higher the likelihood that they’ll pounce on you the instant you come through the door, and it stands to reason that you’d have to go home eventually, so I assume—”

“Oh, jeez,” Ed says. “Duh.”

He takes his own bishop with Roy’s knight, then moves his queen to protect his king, then takes his queen with Roy’s rook—which is, of course, checkmate.

Then he sits back and sighs, rather heavily. “Makes so much sense from _your_ side of the board.”

Roy instinctively lifted both hands to hold them well clear of Ed’s thievery—and clear of the less-immediate possibility of having his fingers smacked away from his own pieces—which leaves him sitting very still and rather wide-eyed with both palms raised. “…what?”

“I understand it,” Ed says, scowling at the game that he concluded so abruptly. “I just… don’t get how to set myself up for the important parts.”

“I suspect that you may manage a slightly better grasp of it,” Roy says, “on your _second_ day playing.”

“Maybe,” Ed says pensively. “Or maybe that part’s sort of past me. I dunno. Guess it doesn’t matter yet.” He stands from his armchair and stretches so extravagantly that his spine cracks. His torso curves like the arc of a flower stem bending under the weight of the rain, and Roy wishes fervently that he hadn’t just thought that. “All right. Gotta go check on the mangy housebound carnivores. You gonna start dinner soon, or should I spring for takeout again?”

Roy opens his mouth, closes it, and opens it again. Then he closes it again, since it seems more polite to hold a curled fist over his mouth as he clears his throat.

“You’re—coming back,” he says.

“Don’t sound so excited,” Ed says, sauntering towards the foyer. “Gotta change while I’m over there, too. Guess I should shower. The cats don’t care, but you probably do.”

“How many are there?” Roy asks, standing to follow him.

“Four,” Ed says. Roy approaches in time to see him cramming his feet back into his boots. Evidently fussing with laces is for people who aren’t beholden to their brother’s cats. “Muffin, Princess, Fluffer, and Phantasmagoria.”

“May I hazard a guess as to which one you named?” Roy says.

“Al calls her Maggie,” Ed says. “He’s evil. Takeout?”

“I’ll cook,” Roy says.

Ed spares him a glance for the first time in this segment of the conversation. “You sure?”

“Well, now that I’ve committed to it,” Roy says, “I have to.” He gestures to Ed. “Besides, I’ll have company. Couldn’t possibly call myself a gracious host if I didn’t provide…” He tries to remember what they bought. The morning… blurs, in memory. A lot of things do, these days; he keeps having to force himself to focus so that he can cling to the particulars of the meetings and the conversations. Details matter, but they slip away from him like so many soap bubbles, and then they burst, and evaporate, and are gone. “…something.”

“That’s a start,” Ed says, having apparently, at last, kicked his way into his shoes in a satisfactory fashion. He flips the deadbolts and offers a very poor impression of a salute. “See ya.”

“Give the cats my best,” Roy says.

“Smartass,” Ed says, and then he slides out the door and shuts it, and he’s gone.

  


* * *

  


There is dust on Roy’s cookbooks—a significant quantity.

A part of him wants to call Riza the instant that his fingertip carves a swathe through the fuzz of gray. He wants to ask her—what? How bad it is? If she can help him? How she consoles herself when the darkness cinches in, and the kindest thoughts that she can muster don’t amount to so much as a candle in the night?

He’s leaned on her too many times over the years—counted on her in too many crises; brought her nothing but his pain and offered little in return. He can’t go to her with this. Asking her to characterize the trajectory of his spiral, even if it really is just for the sake of having a metric, would make her feel responsible for helping to change his course. She is not his keeper, and he needs to let her _live_.

He blows the dust off of the tops of the pages and flips through. Ed supplied him with simple, versatile ingredients, which was likely wise, but which has left him with a very open-ended project and no sounding-board to speak of.

Perhaps if he gazes idly at the table of contents for long enough, the words will simply osmose their way into his brain, and he’ll be struck with inspiration. Stranger things have happened.

He should challenge himself—take on something spectacularly difficult, or at least moderately grueling. Something that will distract him from his own thoughts; something that he can’t take his eyes off of and has to time precisely. Something that will keep him occupied. Even if it’s a disaster, Ed will very likely still be willing to eat it, so there’s nothing to stop him, and nothing to lose.

He realizes his mistake when he’s already diced the vegetables and sectioned out the meat—when he’s just beginning to relax; when the relief of finding himself still suited to a task that is delicate and complicated and creative has suffused him, and he’s starting to feel settled, and stable, and right.

When he turns on the stove, the gas burns blue. His heart skitters; his stomach turns; his head squeezes until his heartbeat resolves into drums, into mortars, into bullets—

He fumbles heedlessly to shut it off; finds the dial on his second try, stumbles and then catches himself against the counter, but it’s too late; it is always too _late_ —

  


* * *

  


He doesn’t lift his head from his folded arms at the banging on the door, or at the “ _I know you’re in there_!”—or at the renewed banging, or at the much less adamant “Roy?”, or at the half-swallowed curse, or at the crackle of alchemy, or at the commotion in the hall, or at the footsteps that halt in the kitchen doorway.

He’s too heavy. Perhaps that was the problem all along. He’s just too damn _heavy_ , whether or not he once believed that he was capable of flight.

“Roy,” Ed says again, and that should register as strange; Ed never uses his first name. The tone, too—almost strangled with concern. That should matter. “Hey—” The footsteps come closer, hesitate, come closer still. A warm hand brushes his shoulder. “I—what—happened? It looks like—it looks like you were doin’ okay. You wanna—talk about it? It’s—I mean, it’s okay if you—don’t. I just… I mean, I’m—here. If you want. Just—if you want to.”

“I think,” Roy says, and the nausea quivers harder through him with the effort of speaking and then levels enough for him to try again. “I think—you might want to see to that takeout after all.”

A scuffing precedes Ed… sitting down beside him, by the sound of it. Roy’s not quite sure whether to believe the assumption until he realizes that he can feel the warmth of Ed’s left shoulder close to his right.

“I’m not about to starve,” Ed says quietly. “It can wait a couple minutes.”

Roy doesn’t know what to say.

That’s not the _worst_ part, obviously—he’s spoiled for choice for aspects of it that make his stomach churn and his heart ache; every time he hesitates, he identifies another moment that feels quite a lot like being crushed beneath a slab of marble.

But that part… stings. Sharply, brightly, acutely. It hurts differently—to have one of his longest-standing powers and most widely-acknowledged skills stripped away from him. To be at a loss, entirely, for words: not just clever ones; not just quips; but _anything_. To reach for his repertoire and come up empty-handed, over and over, when he used to be able to trust his own wit to provide.

It’s changing him. He’s losing himself.

And he’s terrified.

Ed scoots closer, inch by inch, until their shoulders meet. Is that meant to be comforting? Roy’s not sure what else to take from it, if it has some other implication; he knows that the Elric brothers used to make a great show of patting and tapping and shaking one another’s shoulders over the years. This might be a very generous gesture indeed.

Pity, really, that he feels nothing.

“What happened?” Ed says again. “You made it halfway. Something go wrong?”

_The entire direction of my pathetic life_ is a bit too melodramatic to say aloud—even for Roy, even now.

He draws a breath in. That’s something to appreciate, really. A privilege, not a right.

“I lit the stove,” he says.

It doesn’t sound like Ed’s breathing. He should do that. Roy’s taken the opportunity away from a lot of people; both of them should use it now.

“Oh,” Ed says, very softly. At least he’s taken it up again. “I… okay. Well… hang on.”

He touches Roy’s shoulder—lightly, briefly, a grazed contact so momentary that it might well be accidental—and then levers himself upright, by the sound of it.

“I’m gonna start it,” he says, and the slightly increased—very slightly, Roy should say—distance of his voice confirms the supposition. “And put a pan on top of it. You think you can handle it if I do that?”

The surprise chokes out any hope of a lie. “I don’t—know.”

“That’s okay,” Ed says. “If it’s still too much, you can sit in the library, and I’ll just finish it up. How’s that?”

Roy tries to consider it seriously before he responds. Was Ed always such a meddler? It does seem like fitting revenge, after all of the string-pulling Roy did over the years.

“Wouldn’t takeout be easier?” he asks.

“Yeah,” Ed says. “What’s your point?”

Roy spends two more breaths fortifying himself to the best of his ability and then forces himself to unfold his arms and drag himself up onto his feet.

Ed has his hair down—damp, and darkened by it; Roy can’t say that he’s surprised that Ed’s not patient enough for towels and won’t spend potential book money on a blow-dryer. He’s wearing a tightly-fitting black T-shirt decorated with several strands of pale fur.

There’s no time for that.

“You’re not obligated to try to fix my life,” Roy says.

“Duh,” Ed says, shepherding the vegetables to one side of the cutting board with the flat of the blade. “Were you gonna sauté these, or what?”

Roy curls his fingers slowly and takes another breath.

“Edward,” he says. “I am not your responsibility.”

“I know,” Ed says, starting to open cabinets. “Where do you keep your skillets and shit?”

“I don’t want you to cook for me,” Roy says, and if he measures out the words, he can keep his tone calm and his voice level. “I don’t need help taking care of myself, and I d—”

“I’m cooking for me, too,” Ed says, bending to try the doors under the counter. “And I’m hungry, so just tell me wh… A _ha_. Figures your pans’re all sneaky bastards, too.”

“Ed,” Roy says.

“I heard you,” Ed says. He sets the pan down on the countertop, turns, crosses his arms, and arches an eyebrow. “And I figure I know the rest, so let’s skip ahead to the part where you yell and then regret it, and I out-stubborn you anyway, and we make the food and get to eat it. I’m hungry, okay?”

“This is important,” Roy says, and there’s a faint swell of relief at the fact that he can _feel_ that he means it—at the fact that there’s a physical pulse of urgency in him; at the mere presence of the heat climbing the back of his sternum towards his throat.

“So’s food,” Ed says. “Can you just hold that thought until we’re done eating? We can argue then if you still want to.”

“I’m not arguing,” Roy says. If he rises to it and raises his voice, he’s already lost; he has to stay calm; he has to control it. “I’m trying to make you understand that reorganizing your own life to try to pick up the pieces of mine—”

Both of Ed’s eyebrows flick up this time. “Don’t tell me what to do.”

“I’m telling you what not to do,” Roy says. “I’m telling you not to throw time and energy better spent on things you actually _like_ and care about into a pit like this, in the name of—I don’t know, whatever it is for you today; charity or nobility or some doomed hope of making up for what you weren’t able to do for Al—”

That lights Ed’s eyes faster than the stovetop. “Oh, fuck _you_ —you ever think maybe this is why nobody does anything fuckin’ nice for you?” He folds his arms and grits his teeth, but by the flicker of his eyes over Roy’s face, he’s thinking quickly. “Is it something pathological where you _have_ to be an asshole about it from start to finish, or is it a shitty choice that you make on purpose because you’re just so goddamn desperate to push people away?”

“I don’t _want_ you to do this,” Roy says. “I want you to go out and live your life for yourself, like you were fighting for the entire time—you don’t owe me anything. Do you understand that? I don’t expect—”

“I do fucking so,” Ed says, and the metal fingers have clenched tight enough around his left arm that Roy can’t help sparing a thought for the possibility of bruising. “I owe you a lot, and I know that, but that’s not why I’m here, and if you think you can fuckin’ _talk_ me into leaving—”

“I don’t want your pity,” Roy says. “And I don’t want you rubbing your magnanimity in my face when my abject failure to uphold the kind of moral code that you have is—”

“Killing you?” Ed says, and the curl of his lip can’t stop it from spearing straight through Roy’s ribcage, and his whole body goes cold. “Because that’s what I’m fuckin’ seeing, Roy. It’s _killing_ you. And a whole lot of you wants to let it.”

Roy fights the words out one by one: “Whatever you think you’re seeing, it is not, and will never be, your problem, or your duty, or in any way your business what—”

“It _is_ my fucking business,” Ed says, and his hands swing down to his sides swiftly enough that Roy almost anticipates that they’ll rise to hit him next. “ _You_ are my fucking business; stopping you from letting this destroy you—”

“You have your own life and your own problems,” Roy says, and the heat percolating in him starts to coalesce, “and trying to make mine into yours so you can walk away having made all sorts of heroic attempts to rescue someone who used to help you is so textbook martyr complex that—”

“Oh, so it’s about _me_ , is it?” Ed says, taking one step closer, fists curled at his sides. “It’s about me trying to get my greedy little fingers into anything that’ll make me look like a decent human being, because I’m just so damn committed to painting myself as some kind of do-gooder, and I’m so damn worried about what people will think of me if I don’t turn in a framed certificate saying I did something selfless often enough?”

“It’s about you wasting your _time_ ,” Roy says, with the flame flickering blindingly bright in his chest now, searing the inside of his skin everywhere until it feels like he’s on the verge of splitting open. There’s ash in his throat, hot and bitter; he grinds the words out through it, trying to swallow the cinders, struggling to keep his voice steady every time it starts to shake. “Trust me—you don’t want to get involved with me, and I don’t want you to be, and the longer we play at—”

“This is not a fucking _game_!” Ed says, stepping towards him again, and they’re—far too close; close enough for Roy to differentiate the flecks of brown and olive-green in the gold of his eyes; close enough for Roy to see the freckles again; close enough to count his eyelashes as he starts to snarl. “This is your _life_ , and I’m already fucking _involved_ , and if you think I’m even capable of sitting at home with the stupid cats just twiddling my fucking thumbs while you let this thing tear you to pieces because you think you deserve it, then you _never_ fucking knew me, Mustang. Not one fucking day—not _once_.”

“I am not,” Roy says, biting the words out one by one, “a charity case.”

“Nope,” Ed says. “But you’re _stupid_ , and I’m staying.”

Roy drags a breath in—

And he can smell Ed’s shampoo this close. He can smell the soap. Nothing particularly striking; nothing identifiable and nothing floral, which comes as no great surprise, but—

It unbalances him. They’re—

Too close.

He steps back, swallows twice, clears his throat, and looks at the damning evidence strewn across the countertop.

“Fine,” he says. Another moment’s hesitation would have telegraphed capitulation anyway.

“Okay, then,” Ed says. “Can I cook now?”

Roy runs his tongue along the back of his teeth. A part of him wants to spit more venom; a part of him wants to cut Ed so much deeper than he’s even capable of hurting Roy, now, because he _can_. Because Ed had the audacity to step into his sanctum and point out his weakness. Because Ed cares enough to try to force him to survive, and Roy knows that he’s not and never has been as good a man as that.

“If you insist,” Roy says. It’s something like a middle ground between sarcasm and surrender.

“Guess what,” Ed says, crouching again to examine the other pans. “I do.”

Roy gestures to him. “That looks—nice. For the record.”

Ed stands, stares at him, glances back as if there could possibly be someone behind him, frowns, and then resumes staring. “What?”

Roy gestures again, more linearly—up and down Ed’s frame. “You look good with your hair down,” he manages. “Softens your jaw.”

Ed’s eyes narrow. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Exactly what it sounds like,” Roy says. “Just an observation.”

The suspicion doesn’t dissipate a whit. “Okay.” Apparently the original pan is sufficient, because Ed raises it meaningfully and then sets it on the nearest burner. “You ready?”

Roy’s pounding heart probably isn’t, but it’s never done him much of any good. “I suppose.”

He tries to brace himself, well-aware that the effort usually fails, as Ed leans forward, sets his hand on the dial, and—

Summons flame.

But it’s—different. Slightly, but significantly, it’s different—watching someone else do it; someone whose hands he trusts. Having Ed between him and the tongues of violet and orange licking at the iron underneath the pan.

“All right,” Ed says. “Buckle your seatbelt. I think stirring is for losers, so I’m all about tossing the pan.”

“It was extraordinarily clever of you to insinuate yourself into my kitchen _before_ making that confession,” Roy says. He pauses, then crosses back over to the counter, then kneels to sort through the cabinet. “Would you light the back-left and the other burner in the front for me?”

Ed’s feet shift just a little. “You sure?”

“Yes,” Roy says.

“Why the hell do you need two?” Ed asks when Roy stands up again, bearing a large pot in one hand and a smaller one with a long handle in the other. “Pasta and… what?”

“Sauce,” Roy says. “Of course.”

“You know you can pay to have that made for you, right?” Ed asks. “It comes in these cool jars, and they sell it at the store, and then you don’t have to mess around with simmering it for six hours and mincing basil and whatever crap.”

“Maybe I like mincing basil and whatever crap,” Roy says.

“This is exactly why I needed to insinuate myself into your kitchen,” Ed says. “Somebody’s gotta save you from yourself.”

“Just for that,” Roy says, instead of letting it fix itself in him like an arrowhead, “I’m going to make an extremely complicated sauce, and you’re going to have sit here and smell it and _wait_.”

“Dastardly,” Ed says. “You’re gonna do fine in government.”

“Thank you,” Roy says, “I think.”

“You’re welcome,” Ed says, “possibly.”

Roy looks at him. Ed smirks.

Of all the things that Roy taught him, that one may just have backfired the worst.

  


* * *

  


Ed does not leave after dinner.

Ed does not leave after a few hours spent sprawled on the couch with a selection of items liberated from Roy’s library and one of the journals from the nightstand.

Ed does not leave after brushing his teeth, or changing into the pajamas he brought, although he does pause in the doorway to Roy’s bedroom and gaze wistfully at the bed rather than just diving right in.

“I noticed minimal snoring and no kicking whatsoever,” Roy says, settling on his customary side, “so I suppose you’re entitled to a second chance.”

“You make it sound like I’m on probation,” Ed says, creeping forward.

“What makes you think you’re not?” Roy says.

“Oh,” Ed says, stopping mid-stride halfway to the bed. “Shit. Let me go check the doors.”

He darts out immediately, which is lucky in its own right, because it doesn’t give him time to notice that he just left the likes of Roy Mustang speechless for the second time tonight.

  


* * *

  


“I’m not trying to move in,” Ed says from his side—his side on loan—of the bed. “I just realized that it probably looks like that. I swear I’m still paying my rent and stuff.”

“I wasn’t worried about it,” Roy says.

“That’s a bad sign,” Ed says. “You worry about everything. You must’ve reached a worry saturation point, and you can’t worry about anything else right now, or you’ll just… explode.”

“I don’t recall that lesson in chemistry,” Roy says.

“That’s ’cause you’re old,” Ed says calmly. “Your memory’s going.”

“You’re right,” Roy says. “It is. So when you wake up in the middle of the night, shivering because I’ve rolled over and stolen all the blankets, you’ll know that it’s because I forgot that you were here.”

Ed chokes on an effort not to laugh. “Shit. Sorry. I mean—I don’t think you’re _that_ old. Just… like, a little bit. A little old.”

“It’s all right,” Roy says. “I still look forward to the vast majority of your existential crises as you start to reach aging milestones.”

And that’s a tangled, tempting scrap of thought, isn’t it? He has picked out concrete events in his own future that he genuinely wants to reach. Without even noticing, he’s set himself a scattering of goals, spaced out at intervals. Should he mark them on the calendar? Would that make them more real, and solidify the misting, vague desire to make it that far?

“Eew,” Ed says, which doesn’t help much either way. “Well, joke’s on you; my fuckoff dad was basically immortal, so there’s a chance that I’ll get away unscathed.”

No one gets away—not in any condition; not under any circumstances. Hohenheim cheated the ravages of time for centuries, yes, but the world caught up. Roy’s hazy on the details, but he doesn’t believe that that situation was remotely hereditary anyway, so most likely Ed is, as he himself would say, shit out of luck.

“We’ll see,” Roy says, rather than telling him so. “I honestly wasn’t worried about your rent, by the way. I know you wouldn’t put Al’s cats out in the cold.”

“Even if they deserve it sometimes,” Ed says.

“Precisely,” Roy says. “Are you… managing all right, though? Was Alphonse paying part of the cost before he left?”

“Not really,” Ed says. “And it’s actually been a lot easier than I expected, because we were saving up for him to go to school and stuff, but then Ling decided to pay for his entire tuition and all of his living costs and everything. Said it’s the least he can do. Which is bullshit, because the least he could do would be to send a card like a normal person, not give my brother a free ride at the best university in the Xingese capital, but I guess I shouldn’t complain.”

“I suppose that there are some perks to being the emperor,” Roy says. “Perhaps I should make a bid for the throne.”

“Don’t you dare,” Ed says. “I finally got Al safely away from your nefarious plans for tyranny and stuff.”

“‘Tyranny and stuff’,” Roy says. “I’d like to put that at the very _top_ of my résumé, as a summary of my goals. May I credit you?”

“You may go fuck yourself,” Ed says, but he doesn’t roll over fast enough to hide the grin.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry the update for this is a week late! ~~(She says, as if she has had anything remotely resembling a consistent update schedule for a single fic since this time last year.)~~ I thought I'd left myself time to finish this part up last weekend, but I ended up doing more editing than I expected, and it was longer than I'd remembered. ;A;
> 
> This is pretty long (18k and a bit!), and then the next chapter is the one where I was minding my own business and got walloped in the face with a plot and just had to _go with it_ like some kind of _writer_ or something, so stay tuned for that. XD

Making breakfast with Edward Elric in his own kitchen should be… Well, it should be a lot of things. It should be stressful, most likely; it should be marked by alternating bouts of fear and aggravation in time with Ed pulling out ingredients and pushing all his buttons. Roy suspects that he may be experiencing a very serious system-wide button malfunction, which seems more likely than Ed not even trying to get on his nerves just for the hell of it, but the end result is a startling lack of any sort of annoyance.

Stranger still is how not-strange it is. It should be _weird_ —relentlessly bizarre. In less than two days, Ed has functionally installed himself in Roy’s home, and Roy doesn’t have the slightest idea how long he plans to stay. Over the course of his brief tenure here, Ed has taken up policing Roy’s refrigerator and sleeping in his bed, which ought to be setting off alarm bells of several different varieties. Ed is currently extracting blueberry pancakes from a pan by grabbing them between his metal fingers and slinging them directly into plates, which is intimate on so many different scales that it’s possible that Roy’s brain has simply short-circuited, stymying his ability to process any part of this. Perhaps that’s it—Ed has blown up so many of his bastions all at once, without ever asking where to lay the charges, that Roy’s intellect has thrown its hands into the air and given up.

It should be weird.

They’re not even _friends_ —are they? He supposes that they are _now_ , whether he likes it or not; he doesn’t imagine that one can stand around of a Sunday morning in one’s pajamas, flicking blueberry stems at one another and arguing genially about batter consistency, without leaving that threshold well behind, but they weren’t friends when Roy walked in on Friday night and found Ed in his living room. Not quite. There’s been a thin but extremely durable thread of respect and regard drawn out between them since the old days, yes, but friends stay close to one another. Friends talk. Friends meet up and share things and… something. Roy has friends—Riza, for instance. Possibly Jean. Gracia, on days that he feels strong enough to face her.

But the time apart turned him and Ed into acquaintances, and they weren’t friends on Friday. Why isn’t this mind-boggling? Why hasn’t some part of him refused to believe it? Is it remotely plausible that he’s hallucinated this whole thing, and that’s why his brain won’t protest the fundamental fact that Ed is here, both feet and often his ass planted firmly the center of Roy’s personal life, and there’s nothing _strange_ about it?

They compromised on the density of the pancake batter, which was evidently the right choice, since the result is so delicious that it actually registers for Roy that he’s enjoying food. He almost remarks on it before he remembers that he’s trying to convince Ed that he’s fine—halfheartedly, at this point, but it’s the principle of the thing.

Ed is here, after all, because if he can’t force Roy to go to a therapist of some kind, the next best thing is refusing to let Roy be alone. Unfortunately for Ed, the plan has some built-in drawbacks, including the fact that Roy appreciates Ed’s company orders of magnitude more than Roy would appreciate attempting to describe the wreckage of his soul to a supposedly-impartial party, which has just about guaranteed that Roy will follow this route instead of the intended one for as long as possible.

Ed will lose patience eventually, of course. But that might be a while yet.

For the moment, Ed sits back from the kitchen table, stretches, and prods with his fork at the last few drops of syrup left on his plate. “You wanna walk to the park?” he asks.

“No,” Roy says.

“Too bad,” Ed says, “’cause that’s what we’re doing.”

Roy stares at him, mentally retracting at least sixty percent of the charitable things that he’d been thinking up until now. “I just said that I don’t want to.”

Ed flashes a grin. “And I just said that I don’t care.”

“Why?” Roy says.

“Why don’t I care?” Ed asks. “Or why are we going?”

Roy sits back himself, folding his arms. “The former has a clearer precedent, but I’m afraid the latter eludes me.”

“You need to get some sunlight,” Ed says. “Maybe some exercise endorphins, if I piss you off enough that you try to hit me, and I make a run for it, and you get to chase.”

“I don’t like sunlight,” Roy says. “And it doesn’t like me.”

“Maybe it’s just shy,” Ed says. “Give it a chance.”

“I’m an excellent judge of character,” Roy says. “Sunlight has it out for me. Always has.”

“Take the high road,” Ed says. “Kill it with kindness.”

“If I could kill sunlight,” Roy says, “we would live on a very different planet.”

“And we’d all be dead,” Ed says. “Great plan. Remind me why we’re tryin’ to put you in charge, again?”

Roy makes a point of shrugging, and then a point of cramming an oversized bite of pancake into his mouth.

“We’re still going to the park,” Ed says.

Roy swallows so that he can grimace better. “But—”

“If you’re gonna try to convince me that you have work to do,” Ed says, “bring it with you. If you’re gonna try to convince me that you’re better off inside, I’m insulted that you think I’d believe that for half a second. And if you’re… I mean, c’mon. There’ll probably be dogs. It’ll be fun.”

“I don’t like fun, either,” Roy says.

Ed puts an elbow on the table and props his chin on his hand again. “No kidding.”

  


* * *

  


The park is full of people living ordinary lives. Roy tries not to resent them for it—tries not to seethe and smolder with jealousy at the fact that, at the core of it, they made better, safer choices than the ones he made, and their reward is strolling down the pavement paths unbothered by the sun and the breeze and the presences of others.

He did this to himself. He laid down the sacrifices and wrote the runes and spoke the rites. This is his own curse.

Ed picked a nice day for it, if such a thing exists, and if it matters if it does: sunny but not too hot; the grass undulates gently when the wind ripples through it, and the leaves on the trees rattle. A woman talks sternly to her child, pulling him by the hand; one of the promised dogs bounds across the lawn out by the entry gate.

Roy and Ed sit side-by-side on one of the wrought-iron benches built with wooden slats to make the seat. Ed has slid halfway off of the thing into a slouch so relaxed that it looks like it must be spectacularly painful for his spine, but he hasn’t shifted. It’s possible that all those years of train seats have dulled the nerves in his back enough to have rendered him immune.

“I don’t belong here,” Roy says.

“Sure you do,” Ed says. “It’s a public place. Everybody does.”

Roy turns to look at him, meaningfully.

The rueful smile answers the question that he would have asked.

“Okay,” Ed says. “I know. I get it. You look at people just going about their business without a care in the damn world—or at least not one that you can see—and it just… gets to you. After a while. ’Cause none of these people can even imagine living what you’ve lived, and surviving what it’s made you into. None of them could possibly understand how fucking lucky they are to have what they’ve got. And it’s frustrating. And it hurts. And some days you just want to grab people by the shoulders and _tell_ them how good they’ve got it, but… you know this part. I know you do. It’s not their fault. It’s not anybody’s fault. It just is. And you gotta find a way to deal with it.”

“I have,” Roy says. “It’s a wildly innovative new strategy called ‘not going to the park’.”

“No,” Ed says, watching the dog—a beautiful collie with rippling fur and a nightmarish tendency to bark erratically and without warning—pelt after the ball that its owner just threw across the lawn. “Yours is a really old coping mechanism called ‘not going _anywhere_ , because accepting life as a miserable recluse seems easier than trying to get better’.”

Roy’s guts contract into a small, dense, bitter, fiery ball.

“Don’t,” he says.

“For fuck’s sake, Roy,” Ed says, gesturing ahead of them, around them— “This is all there is. Okay? This is what it’s about. You can’t go back—which means you have to keep going, until you can get to a place where this doesn’t hurt so bad anymore. To where you can look at people who are happy and just be sort of vaguely happy for them, instead of so fucking jealous that it fills your mouth with bile, and you wanna spit it at their smiles.” His mouth sits in a a tight line for a second before he says, “I _get_ it. Okay? I’ve never had jackshit in common with anybody my own age except for the ones who have already lost more than some people ever get. But you can do it. I know you can. That’s why I’m bein’ a piece of shit about it. You don’t get to give up. You’ve got too much to do, and we _need_ you around here. They need you. They don’t understand why, and they probably never will, and they probably won’t ever appreciate you, but—damn it, Mustang. This is what it’s for. And I know you. I know you can make it.”

Roy draws a deep breath. He can’t afford anger; he can’t afford to slap down the one hand in the world reaching towards him. A part of him—enough of him—knows that Ed’s right. He has to push the rest of himself over the bulwark of the pride; has to swallow down the desperate self-preserving impulse to stay in the dark, alone, and marinate in the nightmares and the guilt until it seems like sufficient punishment.

He knows that it never will. He knows that there’s no such thing. Logically, then, his only option is to try to change.

Damn Ed for seeing through him; damn how perceptive the intervening years have made the single most obliviously brilliant child that Roy had ever met. Damn how dangerous Ed’s become.

“I need more time,” Roy says.

“You don’t have any,” Ed says. “That’s the hard part. It doesn’t stop. None of it ever stops. Nothing’s gonna wait for you to find your feet. You just have to get up and _run_.”

If only he weren’t so damn tired—every second of every minute of every day.

“I know,” Ed says, even though Roy hasn’t articulated any of that yet. “But the least you can do—for yourself, for everyone who’s counting on you, for everyone who got you here, for everyone who’s gone… The least you can do is try. Okay? That’s all I’m saying. Just give it your best damn shot. I’m not gonna ask anything more from you than that.”

Roy pushes his tongue against the back of his teeth; swallows a few sharp-edged possibilities; reassembles the syllables until they’re softer all around.

“Does that mean that we’re going roller-skating next weekend?” he asks.

“Obviously you’ve never seen what happens when you combine automail and wheels,” Ed says. “But if you get your ass up, I’ll buy you ice cream.”

“I don’t want ice cream,” Roy says.

“Too bad,” Ed says. “Chocolate?”

“I don’t want any,” Roy says. “And even if I did, I wouldn’t let you pay for it after everything y—”

A man’s voice rises to a wordless shout behind them, and the sudden noise moves like thunder through him—all at once, staggeringly resonant in the center of his chest; and then trembling out to his extremities—

As he surfaces from the stream of panic and rediscovers himself on the stupid bench in the stupid park, he realizes—belatedly indeed—that his first instinct was to grab Ed’s wrist and squeeze.

He supposes that it’s fortunate, relatively speaking, that he caught the right one, given that his own fingers ache with the pressure of his grip.

“Chocolate it is,” Ed says, looking at Roy’s hand. “I think a sugar rush is gonna do you good.”

  


* * *

  


The ice cream certainly doesn’t hurt, but if Roy lets on, Ed will be insufferable. Ed may figure it out anyway from the way that Roy is fastidiously licking every last smear of chocolate off of the little plastic spoon, but that’s a risk that he’s willing to take.

“I really do have to get some work done,” he says as he completes a critically important survey of the spoon’s surface to make sure that he didn’t miss anything.

“Okay,” Ed says.

Roy should say something about how he’s capable of walking home from here alone, or about how he could bring Ed’s toothbrush by with the car later, or about how he’s tired of having a bright-headed shadow trailing him around his own house.

The problem is that while the first two are true, the fact that the last one isn’t makes both of the others unnecessary.

He’ll just…

He’ll work his way up to it.

Right?

  


* * *

  


“Hey,” Ed says as the afternoon dwindles, by which time he has monopolized the couch and one of his latest acquisitions from Roy’s library for a good while. “You been sleeping any better?”

Roy lowers the file that he was trying very hard to pay attention to. He wasn’t succeeding anyway, although at least he did make some headway into his tea before it went cold. “Have you?”

“I’m askin’ about you,” Ed says, which Roy has to admit is objectively true.

So is his answer.

“Yes,” he says. “As far as I can tell, at least. I don’t… I’ve been dreaming less, and I don’t remember waking up either of the past two nights. I think the sleep debt is still collecting, but I feel a bit more awake.” He lifts the file, crosses one leg over the other, and sets the file on top of his knee again. “You?”

“Yeah,” Ed says, slowly, playing with the corner of his current page in the book. “Guess my brain really is that stupid. You’d think the damn _cats_ would’ve worked, but I guess it wants people. What a pain. So… you… mind if I stay another night or two, maybe?”

Roy should say _no_.

A part of him is sure of it—a part of him rides afloat a flood of conviction that this will go terribly, terribly sour if he doesn’t cut it off completely while it’s still good. They’ll end up at each other’s throats, won’t they? One should never enlist friends—or something-like-friends; whatever, precisely, they are now—as roommates. One should never subject a relationship that has intrinsic value to the vagaries of household chores and petty fights about wet towels on the floor and whose turn it is to clean the kitchen. This whole weekend has been an exercise in constant surprise at how much he _likes_ Ed, when it’s just the two of them, with no military hierarchy or conflict of motives in between. The last thing that he wants to do is to jeopardize a fragile bit of peace that he’s only just discovered.

Which is, of course, exactly why the rest of him can’t imagine the idea of turning down another day.

“I don’t see why not,” he says, since that’s… something like a compromise with the screaming protests of his better judgment. He thought that he’d rid himself of that pesky thing a long time ago.

“Cool,” Ed says, and the flash of a grin makes something fizzle out in the logical centers of Roy’s brain. It’s fine, of course. It’s fine if Ed stays forever. That’s perfectly reasonable, isn’t it? “I can handle dinner if you want, but first I gotta run over and make sure the cats aren’t bothering the neighbors yowling for their stupid food.”

“Surely it’s the best stupid food available,” Roy says, “given that they’re Al’s. Would you like me to drive you?”

“Only if you promise not to kill us both on the way over,” Ed says.

“It’s barely over a mile,” Roy says.

“Which leaves plenty of time for you to kill us both and still stop for coffee,” Ed says.

“I’m not _that_ bad,” Roy says. “Except when I’m distracted.”

“You’re always distracted,” Ed says. “Comes with the schemer territory. You have to notice everything, or you think you’re missing the lynchpin detail.”

Roy raises an eyebrow. “Shall I swear on my life to be as deliberately unobservant as possible for the duration of this particular car ride?”

“Smartass,” Ed says, clapping the book shut and slinging himself up from the couch. “Let’s get this over with before I lose my nerve.”

Roy sets his file aside, tucks his glasses into his shirt pocket, and attempts to follow suit, albeit much less limberly. “The Fullmetal I knew would gleefully embrace a dance with danger.”

“The Fullmetal you knew was a mouthy brat and a showoff,” Ed says, “with too much to prove and no expectation of living past seventeen. I got _rent_ to pay, Roy.”

“And the cats need you,” Roy says, because facing the rest of that sentence is too terrifying altogether. Exactly how much of Ed’s vibrance did he himself snuff out? Exactly how many cues did he miss as to just how close the pressure came to crushing his pet project child soldier?

“You’re damn right,” Ed says. “It just wouldn’t be the same if they had to torment anybody else.”

Roy supposes that the same applies to him, at this point.

  


* * *

  


The collar-tag-jingling begins before Ed’s even fitted his key into the lock. It’s a modest enough building—not especially new, but relatively clean, and it bears none of the cracked ceilings, creaky elevators, or marred paint that would lead Roy to question its structural integrity, so he supposes that the Elrics could do a lot worse, especially on a single military salary. He’s willing to bet that the sacrifices are more than worth it set against the alternative of suffering the dorms, if only because this gives Ed _one_ place that he can set his own rules.

“All right, all right,” Ed says, shouldering his way in when the door sticks slightly in the frame. “Back up, ya little monsters. I don’t wanna hit you, but if you don’t shift your fuzzbucket asses—”

The mewing commences in earnest as soon as the two of them sidle through the door, which Ed then shuts firmly behind them. A small, lithe, cream-colored cat with yellowish markings winds around Ed’s ankles once, tail hooking around his shin, and then turns her attention—and two luminous gold eyes—up to Roy.

“Is this Maggie?” Roy asks.

“Yeah,” Ed says. “How’d you know?”

Roy crouches down and scratches behind the ears. “Lucky guess.”

“Oh, great,” Ed says, hands planted on his hips as he watches Roy coax out some soft purring. “You’re one of those people who’s a sucker for anything cute with fur, aren’t you?”

“Don’t tell anyone,” Roy says. “My spotless public image of stoic intensity would never survive.”

The cats circle him like sharks on the scent of blood, which is adorable and hilarious in approximately equal measure. Ed grimaces at him. “You know they’ve got this place called ‘the pound’ where they’re _trying_ to get rid of them, right?” Ed says. “Why don’t you get one?”

“I’ve killed every plant that anyone was ever fool enough to trust me with,” Roy says, nudging a knuckle under Phantasmagoria’s chin. What he took for collar tags by the noise was, in fact, tiny gold bells. That might go further towards explaining Ed’s inability to sleep than Al’s absence, come to think of it. “I’ve just never had the heart to risk it.”

“Eh,” Ed says. “Save that cutesy shit for the campaign trail. People will eat it up. Speaking of—c’mon, you mangy animals, it’s nutrition time. Mustang’s not on the menu; leave him alone.”

All four furballs scamper after him as he heads through the living room and into the kitchen, where he picks up the silver bowls on the floor—metal fingertips clinking against their edges—and inspects them. He rinses all of them and mops idly at them with a towel; he sets two of them on the floor and fills the other two from the tap before laying them alongside—

Roy realizes that he’s intently watching his something-like-a-temporary-roommate feed cats. Somewhere in the appendices of the book of etiquette, it _must_ mention that that’s bad form.

He’s not sure if wandering the only room that he was technically invited into is any better—there’s less to investigate than he expected, but Ed can’t have anticipated that they’d wind up here together, so this must represent its natural state of being. It’s more… austere than he would have guessed. He hadn’t spared it too many idle thoughts—he _does_ have a job, after all, and something like a life, and other universal mysteries and depthless imponderables to consider—but he’d always thought that once the Elrics finally settled down, they’d do so with great panache, and fill a place with cats and books and travel mementos. He’s always thought that the letters would pour in; maybe some would be framed on the wall, but most Alphonse would probably file in alphabetical order for days when they were in danger of forgetting what they meant to people back then. Newspaper clippings—he’d imagined a collage, with some fondness. Possibly a smaller, secondary collection of photos of him, decorated with penned-on clown noses and balloon hats and curly villain moustaches. Surely a cork board like the one on Pinako’s wall, blanketed in photographs of the places they’ve been and the people they’ve met and the experiences that have made them who they are.

It could be just that the cats took precedence, of course, and neither of them wanted to risk displaying anything precious when they were planning to leave several mischievous felines alone on the premises for hours at a stretch. It could be that Al took many of the sentimental pieces with him, to paper the walls of whatever sorts of quarters they’ve given him in Xing.

Roy doesn’t want to dwell on the alternative that keeps creeping up from the back of his mind—the possibility that they don’t _want_ reminders. The possibility that they’re relieved that it’s all over with, perhaps, in Alphonse’s case; the possibility that the memories are getting to be painful, in Ed’s, because the trajectory of his life has peaked, now, and he doesn’t know how far down the curve of it will take him now.

“Hey!” Ed says. “You little thief. Get outta there.”

Roy doesn’t imagine that it’s a matter of life and death—he’s relatively confident that, even outnumbered four to one, Ed can handle cats without much trouble—but he saunters over to peer through the kitchen doorway, since he’s waiting regardless. “Everything all right?”

Sure enough, Ed is wrangling the larger black cat away from one of the bowls. “Yeah—just—this one always wants to eat twice his share even if it means somebody else is gonna starve. He’s not a cat anymore; he’s a hog. We should’ve called him Ling.”

Roy tries not to smile. “I can only assume that you refrained in order to avoid starting an international incident. That was very thoughtful of you.”

“Thanks,” Ed says. Not-Ling the cat gives up on squirming in favor of wriggling up and rubbing his head against Ed’s cheek and jaw in a way that is…

Well, in a way that is, frankly, utterly charming.

At least to bystanders, apparently.

“Knock it off,” Ed says, attempting to writhe away from Not-Ling without letting go of his charge. “You think that if you mark me, I’m not gonna go out and feed any other cats? Is that it? Tough shit, buddy; doesn’t work that way.”

“I think he’s just being affectionate,” Roy says.

“Shows what you know,” Ed says. “They only like me ’cause I give them a reason to. If somebody else was feeding ’em, I’d be less than chopped liver.”

“I’m not sure I believe that,” Roy says.

“That’s because you’re the second most contrary person alive,” Ed says. “Or—wait. Maybe the third. I dunno, you and Al are pretty close when he’s in a mood.” Apparently one of the better-behaved cats has eaten a sufficient quantity to quell Ed’s concerns about unfairness, because he assesses the bowls and then releases his captive. Not-Ling nuzzles at his knees before padding back over to the food. “Nice try,” Ed says. “Flattery’ll get you nowhere, you lunk.” He levers himself up to his feet and stretches both arms over his head, which elongates his body in a way—

That Roy is never going to notice again, per his previous instructions to himself, which were evidently more difficult to follow than he anticipated. Ed is not an option. Ed is helping him; Ed is offering him kindness; Ed is his friend. Roy is not going to imperil what they’ve constructed here over a bit of blood-quickening weakness inspired by another man’s abs and hipbones, no matter how exemplary they might be. He has failed at a great many things in his lifetime, most of them dire and unforgivable, but he knows that he can be better than this.

Perhaps if he repeats it enough times in his own head, it will get easier to pretend that it’s true.

“Okay,” Ed is saying. “That’s the one thing I had to do today taken care of. What’s on your agenda right now?”

“Work,” Roy says.

Ed frowns at him. “You were working for, like, two hours.”

Roy raises an eyebrow.

“It’s _Sunday_ ,” Ed says.

“I don’t suppose you want to play some more chess,” Roy says.

“No,” Ed says. “But—hey. See if you wanna borrow any of _our_ books. Just… take a look around. I’m gonna go grab a couple things before I forget. Don’t let the cats trick you into giving them any more food. They’re liars.”

“I will be the model of restraint,” Roy says, which is funnier than Ed could possibly know.

“I bet,” Ed says. “You’ve never been suckered into anything in your life, after all. I dare you to spend five whole minutes thinking about something that _isn’t_ work.”

“I can’t,” Roy says, going for melodramatic and ending up much closer to sincere. “I don’t know who I am without it.”

“I know,” Ed calls back as he starts down the hall. “That’s what we have to figure out.”

  


* * *

  


Monday morning leaves him wondering.

Perhaps it was a fluke. Perhaps it was a _dream_ —perhaps it was some sort of feverish hallucination; perhaps he invented the whole thing out of sheer desperation to be anything other than pathetic and alone.

One or the other he could stomach, but together they’re too much to bear. It’s enough to drive an already unstable man to the very precipice of his wits, isn’t it?

Roy has always been creative, in his way: he’s always had a knack for weaving truth and lies together so tightly that the fabric looks homogeneous to the naked eye. He’s always been unparalleled at predicting others’ actions, nudging at their feelings, and shepherding their thoughts. Why wouldn’t that talent apply to himself? What’s so unlikely about him, at this stage, in this cesspit of his own making, building himself a pleasant little fantasy version of his own life?

It’s not unthinkable. It’s not even unlikely. It is, in fact, just about the simplest and most cogent explanation for the phenomena that he’s convinced himself that he’s observed. The incomprehensibility of Ed committing almost every second of his spare time to babysitting his previous employer makes staggeringly perfect sense if it’s nothing but a wash of wishful thinking.

Roy spins his pen on top of the report that he should be reading. Last month’s arrest record from the military police will have to wait a little longer, given that the fate of… his sanity, at least, and possibly more, currently hangs in the balance.

Presuming that he’s solved it—presuming that it’s a long and detailed hallucination, and none of the passersby in the park were quite frightened enough to call the cops when they saw him carrying on a conversation with himself—what now? He has to take action before it gets any further out of hand—before he hurts someone; before he loses the rest of his tenuous grip on reality and puts someone in real danger as a result. The likeliest victims are people he’s already close to, and that’s… the list of his unconscionable acts spans volumes, now, but he won’t add that to it. He can’t.

What, then? Even if he’s capable of finding a trustworthy psychiatrist in his current state, he doesn’t imagine that the average talk therapist will be equipped and ready to deal with constant, complex hallucinations. There must be inpatient facilities for this sort of thing, but what would they do to him in a place like that? The mere fact that he hasn’t heard much about this country’s psychiatric wards is a bad sign; the little that he has heard is worse. There isn’t a chance in hell that he could check in to a place like that—or even set foot in one and ask a few faux-idle questions—without the whole city knowing about it by sunrise.

He can’t exactly operate on his own brain—and he hasn’t the slightest idea what to poke and what to excise and what not to touch with a ten-foot pole if he could; he doesn’t even know how to _live_ —

A knock at the door reminds him, albeit belatedly, that he’s supposed to be working, rather than watching his entire world collapse around him. He picks up his pen and attempts to look as though he was just startled out of an intense focus, rather than like a man surfacing from the shallows of the pool he’ll drown in.

“Come in,” he says.

Riza steps smoothly inside, shuts the door gently behind her, starts pretending to adjust her clipboard as she sneaks a glance at him, and then… pauses.

“Sir,” she says, in the neutral-concerned voice.

He raises his eyebrows.

She takes one more step towards the desk—or, more realistically, away from the door—before she adds, “What happened? You look… you look like you _slept_.”

Evidently he didn’t hallucinate all of it, then. Is that a net positive? At least he got some sleep out of it, even if the rest—

“Are you all right?” she asks. He must be making a face. Damn, he’s _really_ losing his edge.

“Perfectly,” he says. “I… I think part of it was the weather. Pleasant. Better for sleeping. You know.”

She gives him the narrowed-eyed suspicious look that he knows and loves as long as it’s directed at somebody else. “Were there chemical supplements involved, or is it just a miraculous and previously unrecorded side-effect of autumn?”

“I wasn’t drinking,” he says, and it’s… sad, and a bit remarkable, that he hardly noticed at the time how unusual that was. Apparently Riza feels the same way, since it’s her turn to arch an eyebrow meaningfully, to which he has no choice but to respond, “I wasn’t using anything else, either. Just—lucky. I suppose.”

She doesn’t believe a word of it, which makes sense, given that her ferociously understated intelligence is one of the many things that he adores her for. She takes two more steps towards him, the better to tug a square of folded cardstock free from the clipboard clip and offer it out. “Sorry to interrupt, but there was a missive for you. It says it’s urgent.”

“Is it?” he asks, because it’s also stamped with _Confidential_ , and it’s for him, which means that she’s already read it.

“In a manner of speaking,” she says. “It’s not… technically _urgent_ , but it is…”

He opens it.

“From Ed,” he says, stupidly.

“That is correct,” she says.

There’s not much to it: the inter-office communiques have silly little checkboxes for the reason that you’re sending a note by courier, which include things like meeting requests, summonses, and HR complaints. Ed has, of course, checked all of them individually, ignored the title and sender fields, and written _Hi, you want to get lunch?? I will come by at 12 unless you tell me not to. Probably even if you do. —E.E._

Roy likes that he signed it with both initials, as if this particular message could, in a thousand universes, have come from anybody else.

Roy can’t have hallucinated the weekend—not all of it, at any rate. Before Friday afternoon, he hadn’t spoken to Ed in ages. There would be no cause for this, and the familiarity—

Hell. Riza will have noticed that.

“Ah,” Roy says, and even petty helplessness hurts so much more now—a cold, ineluctable creeping, like fever chills climbing up his spine and shuddering out to the tips of his fingers, claiming him up and down. “It’s… complicated.”

“I see,” Riza says, in the unmistakable tone of someone who knows much better than to believe anything that he says at a time like this.

But then she tilts her head, attempts to suppress a slight smile, shrugs lightly, and turns towards the door.

“It’ll be nice to see him,” she says. “He hasn’t been by in a while.”

“Quite,” he says, and she slips back out through the door.

But that’s true, isn’t it? Ed hasn’t visited in… months, at the very least; he keeps to the downstairs Investigations rooms like they have him on the actual leash that Roy threatened in something-like-jest so many times.

And yet, for some reason, he was drawn to the shower room closest to this office as his place of refuge. Why?

Roy can’t ask, obviously—well, he can, but he can’t expect an honest answer. Odds are good that if Ed has a reason, it’s at least half-subconscious, and he may not even have registered it himself.

It’s… good, though. It’s good to have meaningless little mysteries like this to occupy himself with. It’s better than any of the alternative passageways of thought, with their low ceilings and their hundred-thousand hidden traps.

And it’s _much_ better than believing that he hallucinated an entire weekend. Even for him, that would have been a touch excessive.

  


* * *

  


He should know better by now: he expects Ed to saunter in at two minutes past twelve, shoot the shit with the rest of the team for a while, and then coax Roy down to the cafeteria.

Instead, Ed bangs into the outer room a full half-hour late, panting audibly even with Roy’s office door closed, shouts “Hey!” at Falman and Fuery, and directs the explosion right into Roy’s office from there.

Which, for the record, leaves Roy clutching at the armrests of his chair, trying to pry his white-knuckled fingers off of them as the door slams open, and his spine contracts a little tighter, compressing the rest of him to fit.

“Um,” Fuery says, cautiously, “could you… It helps if you’re quiet with the doors, Major; it…”

“Oh, shit!” Ed says, bright-eyed and beautiful even when he’s wincing in Roy’s doorway. “Sorry.” He holds up both hands—the left bears a large brown paper bag; in the right, he has two glass soda bottles dripping condensation. “And sorry I’m late. Brought lunch. Figured it was easier this way.”

Roy has managed to loosen one of his hands’ rigor-mortis-ready grip on the chair, which allows him to lay a forcedly casual elbow on his desk and raise his eyebrows. “That was… very considerate of you.”

“I know,” Ed says. He jerks his head backwards, indicating something or somewhere that Roy can’t fathom. “Hey, c’mon. Best part of lunch is getting a change in scenery, even if it’s not a big one.”

Roy frees his other hand and manages to prevent both from visibly shaking, although they still feel weak. He’s standing. When did he get so obedient? There’s something about the way that Ed makes suggestions—like the only thing more obvious than what he asks of you is the fact that you’ll be safe with him while you do it.

“What does that mean?” Roy asks, despite the notable detail that it’s clearly too late to protest.

Ed rolls his eyes. “You’re about to find out. Come _on_ , already.”

“Have a nice lunch, sir!” Fuery chirps after them as Roy trails Ed out the door.

“Thank you,” Roy says, despite the twirl of trepidation in the pit of his stomach.

Ed never _means_ to hurt him—he knows that; he knows that Ed’s soul is polished gold straight through; he knows that the intentions are always good, and the trials are always meant to be restorative. But a gouge wound bleeds every bit as freely when it was meant to be a scratch.

Evidently it won’t stop him, though, from following his erstwhile least-subordinate subordinate down the hall, around a few turns, up the stairs—up more stairs—all the way to a door blazoned with a very large placard reading—

“‘No entry’?” Roy says.

“Here, hold this,” Ed says, shoving the bottles at him; Roy takes them on instinct, and Ed applies his metal hand to the doorknob instead, which—of course—won’t turn. “It’s the roof access. Hang on.”

He pushes the bag at Roy, too, and Roy is, as ever, fool enough to accept it, because that’s what the social contract requires of him right now.

“Why are we going to the roof?” Roy asks. “Or, perhaps I should say—why are we going to the roof when it’s the one place in this entire building that we’re not allowed to go?” He pauses. “Actually… I believe I just answered my own question.”

Ed has a paperclip in his left hand, and he crouches down to start jimmying it inside the lock. Is alchemy too risky, or is he just showing off? “Oh, come on. You really think anybody’s gonna report a _general_ for ignoring a sign?”

“I would,” Roy says.

“You would _not_ ,” Ed says.

“I’d think about it,” Roy says.

“Doing is the only thing that counts,” Ed says.

“You’re picking a lock,” Roy says.

“Exactly,” Ed says. “ _Thinking_ about picking a lock has never opened a door in my life.”

“I am aware,” Roy says. “But my comment was meant to remind you of the relevant detail that you’re very likely the country’s best alchemist.”

“One of ’em,” Ed says. “And the only one who’d go through a door that says ‘No entry’ just because it says not to. So if there were marks on it, they’d know _exactly_ who to blame.” He pauses in the fiddling to flash a grin over his shoulder. “Guess who I learned that kinda thinking from?”

“I refuse to be implicated in this criminal activity,” Roy says. Ed rolls his eyes and then focuses them on the illegality in question again. The doorknob doesn’t seem to want to yield. “Do you… need some help?”

Ed mutters something that sounds suspiciously like “Ah, the duality of man,” followed immediately, and much more audibly, by “Nah, I think I… _there_ we go, you little shit.”

He turns the handle and pushes, and… up they go.

There are worse ways to bend the rules. Roy’s tried most of them.

“Is there a particular reason that you want to have lunch on the roof?” Roy asks, as steadily as he can when he’s struggling not to betray the fact that Ed’s pace has winded him a bit by the second flight of stairs.

“It’s nice,” Ed says. He skips up the last five, the _devil_ , and shoulders through the door at the top, admitting a burgeoning swell of blinding light into the stairwell. “Quiet and stuff. And you get to see the city in a different way.”

Roy is no longer the man who would say _Do you enjoy seeing the tops of things for a change?_

He’s still the one who thinks it, rather loudly, but he won’t give it voice.

That has nothing whatsoever to do with the fact that he’s more than slightly out of breath from keeping up with Ed.

One more thing has gone right today: Ed’s too preoccupied with wandering over towards the low white wall at the edge of the roof, cavalry skirt rippling behind him as the breeze runs through it, to notice Roy succumbing to the vagaries of age. “Plus nobody ever comes looking for you up here. It’s probably better than the showers, honestly. You might want to give it a shot.”

Roy swallows, and it goes down prickly, which might be what compels him to say the stupid thing despite himself: “Are you sure it’s wise to be sending me to the heights of buildings these days?”

Ed pauses and turns to look at him, which, by the flicker of satisfaction in the center of his chest, had to be what Roy was seeking—his attention.

That’s rather interesting.

It’s also rather pathetic.

“I’m not worried about that,” Ed says, and his eyes are so hard and so old for a long second that Roy regrets having spoken. “You wouldn’t do it here, and you wouldn’t do it like that. You wouldn’t want to make a scene. Or a mess.”

The prickling returns.

Ed takes a breath so deep that it lifts both his shoulders, and then he lets it out and forces a smile.

“Shut up,” he says, regardless of the fact that Roy hasn’t said anything. “Bring the food over here, c’mon.”

Evidently, a few low blocks of concrete were built atop the roof for some arcane architectural reason. They stand several feet back from the wall but almost as high; seated on them, one can scan the skyline and watch the streets below without being in any immediate danger of toppling off to one’s demise. Once he and Ed are settled, Roy hands one of the bottles and the bag back to Ed, who reaches into the latter and offers him something very warm and wrapped in foil.

“Before you ask what it is,” Ed says, “instead of opening it and finding out, like a _person_ —they’re calzones. Best ones in town, at least that I’ve found so far.”

Roy peels back a bit of silver, and the smell that greets him defies description. Today continues to look up. What a bizarre feeling.

“I have always wanted to marinate myself in grease from the inside out,” he says.

“Fuck you,” Ed says, cheerfully. “Knew you were gonna say that. Had ’em put vegetables in.”

“You are a marvel,” Roy says, and it comes out sounding significantly less sarcastic than he’d hoped.

“Cheers,” Ed says. “Try it.”

Roy does.

If heaven were advertised as an amalgam of melted cheese and tomato sauce and crispy pepperoni, with a trace of green pepper and a whisper of a mushroom, he would have to revisit his religious beliefs.

“I would like to repeat my previous statement about the marinating,” he says, “but sincerely.”

Ed says something that might be _That’s what I thought_ , but it’s impossible to distinguish with his mouth so full.

Eating with Ed while watching the city from the rooftop turns out to be every bit as strangely companionable as all of the Ed-inclusive activities that preceded it.

“Is it okay that I sent you that note?” Ed asks when he’s demolished his food and moved on to licking the fingertips of his left hand. “Not just ’cause I’m wasting government resources or whatever, but—I dunno. I just figured it’d do you some good to get out of your damn office in the middle of the day. But do people look at your mail and stuff?”

“As far as I know,” Roy says, slowly, “Lieutenant Hawkeye is the only one who reads my correspondence. But there is quite a bit that I don’t know.”

Ed musters a halfhearted smirk. “You’re tellin’ me.”

“I’m glad you sent it,” Roy says, which wipes the expression right off of Ed’s face again. “I was—up until that point, I wasn’t… entirely sure that the weekend had happened at all. The empirical evidence was very helpful in indicating otherwise.”

“Wait,” Ed says. “You thought—what? You dreamed it up or something?” He pushes his hand back into his bangs, which is somewhat ill-advised given that his tongue was on his fingers moments ago, but it’s too late to tell him. The eyebrow not obscured by his wrist arches, and he levels a wry look at Roy. “Is it really that hard to believe that I’d wanna do something nice for you, or what?”

“Less unbelievable that you’d want to,” Roy says, “than that you _would_. You’re—” Oh, dear. He’s doing what Riza calls the Fly-Shooer, which is the single most egregious of his unhelpful hand gestures. “—young, and finally free of so many old obligations, and… you should be out there living the life you always wanted and couldn’t have, not locking yourself up with the likes of me.”

“You have the best books,” Ed says.

“You’ll have your whole life for books,” Roy says. “Isn’t there anything you were _waiting_ for, back then? You’re not… tied to it anymore. You should be out there living it up and… partying. I don’t know. Chasing skirts. Having a riot of a time.”

Ed looks out at the city. “I don’t like skirts.”

“I didn’t mean to wear,” Roy says, “although I think you could pull it off better than you’d… never mind. I meant figuratively, in reference to girls.”

Not a muscle in Ed’s face moves, though the wind pulls at his hair. “So did I.”

Roy… pauses.

How remarkably stupid of him—and, perhaps worse still, how startlingly unperceptive.

He—

Knows better than to say it, but his mouth’s open all the same.

“Go ahead,” Ed says. “Get it over with.”

“I’m sorry,” Roy says. Fancy that: he might as well be over the edge of the roof at this rate; this feels very much like he imagines falling to his demise probably would. “I always thought… you and Winry…”

“Yeah,” Ed says. He draws his right knee up to his chest, sets his chin down on it, and hooks his left arm around his shin. “So did I. Only it… didn’t work in practice like it did in theory.”

“Many good things don’t,” Roy says.

“I love her,” Ed says, staring at the skyline. “I love her to death. But it—I love her the same way I love Al, I guess, or close enough to it. Like a fact. Like flesh and blood. And that wasn’t… I thought that was all it was supposed to be. And I thought that if I tried really hard and gave it everything I had, I could make that enough. But I couldn’t, and it wasn’t, and—” He musters a very unconvincing shaky laugh. “Whatever. You don’t need to hear about this crap. Point is, that—didn’t go so well. And I guess if we’re bein’ a little too honest to try to set a good example for your dumb ass, then that’s… part of the reason I’m still here. Or back here, I guess. Trying to start something different didn’t turn out so great, so I came back to something that I knew that I could handle.”

“Some of the other things I mentioned still stand,” Roy says. “You’re young. You have the energy of at least three freight trains and a power grid for an entire city block. You’ve got time.”

“I don’t want time,” Ed says, scrubbing his softer hand up his face. “I want shit to make sense.”

“That,” Roy says, “is a much ta…” He clears his throat. “More… difficult… prospect.”

At least that squeezes something like a smile out of Ed. “‘Taller order’? Really?”

“It slipped,” Roy says.

“My knuckles’re gonna slip into your face,” Ed says, without a trace of malice, vehemence, or venom. He directs his gaze at the toe of his boot instead of at the city for a few long seconds before he says, slowly, “It… doesn’t… bother you? Me staying at your house, I mean. Knowing… that. I mean, obviously if you change your mind, because of… this, or because of—anything—I mean, whatever. I totally get it, and it’s not a big deal, so—”

“Maes and I were together for a year and a half,” Roy says. Even wreathed, as ever, in ice and thorns, it comes out easier than he expected. Ed’s like that. There isn’t a _thank you_ in the language for it. “He asked to break it off when he started seeing Gracia, and I told him that that was a fine idea, and that what we had had and what we had been had never much mattered to me anyway, and that I was very happy for him.” He wipes a smudge of condensation from the side of the bottle, which he hasn’t even opened. “All of which, was, of course, a stack of very thickly-layered lies.”

Ed stares at Roy, which is at least a nice change from Ed gazing blankly at the scenery or at his shoes. “I—shit. I mean—I’m sorry. For—” He hesitates. “Y’know. For the… _more_ that it was. More than I ever realized. More than anybody else knew, I guess.”

“That part has healed,” Roy says, which a lovely little mendacious cherry on top of the whole aching affair.

“Yeah fuckin’ right,” Ed says, and Roy wishes that he wasn’t always the smallest touch grateful for how brutally uncompromising Ed can be when it comes to petty niceties. “But—” Ed’s eyes narrow, dart away, flicker back. “So… you’re… There were all those chicks. Not _all_ of ’em were informants, were they? So you’re…”

“There are a billion different kinds of beauty in the world,” Roy says. “I am susceptible to nearly all of them.”

Ed continues to eye him. “That sounds like it sucks.”

“Sometimes it does,” Roy says.

“That also sounds more like _you_ than you’ve sounded in days,” Ed says.

“What?” Roy asks. “Fluid and flirty?”

A touch of pink seeps into Ed’s cheeks, but he sets his jaw. “Something like that.”

“I suppose I’ll have to work my way back up to it,” Roy says.

A trace of a smile escapes the glower. “See, that sounds like progress.”

“Presuming that you’re still not a hallucination,” Roy says, “albeit one who comes bearing sinfully delicious food, I think that you may be right about a lot of it. Things don’t fix themselves. People don’t either.”

“Except sometimes on accident,” Ed says. “When entropy does something ironic. But you can’t ever count on that.”

“Precisely,” Roy says. “And adages about old dogs and new tricks aside…”

Ed rolls his eyes hard enough that Roy has to bite his lip on a grin. “I _said_ I was sorry for calling you old. You are still a dog, though. Probably the kind that runs into glass doors because it thinks they’re open.”

“Most assuredly,” Roy says. “Screen doors, too.”

“Yeah, but those you can’t leave a nose-print on,” Ed says.

“My calling card,” Roy says.

They look at each other.

Ed swallows, hard, and manages, “You don’t think it’s weird?”

He could be referring to any number of things—the interest in men, the lack of interest in a specimen of woman as exemplary as Winry Rockbell, inviting himself over to Roy’s house and claiming roommate privileges in light of the two previous—but the answer to all of them is the same:

“I think weirdness is a social construct,” Roy says.

“Oh, jeez,” Ed says, and he snatches up his crumpled foil and jumps down from the block. “I’m not having this stupid argument with you again.”

“Argument?” Roy says. “I thought it was a nice, civil debate about semantics between friends.”

“I’m not having that argument with you, either,” Ed says, starting back towards the stairs.

Roy holds up his untouched, still-capped, condensation-dripping bottle. “Would you like my soda?”

“Hell, yes,” Ed says, wheeling around on his heel to walk back so quickly that his hair snaps behind him. “Let me guess—you put soda in the same category as ice cream.”

“I hope,” Roy says, handing it over into the metal fingertips, “for your sake, that your metabolism never crashes. I was not so lucky.”

Ed snorts. “Why do you get all huffy when I call you old when you’re already saying it about yourself?”

Roy slides down off of the block. “For the same reason that you’re allowed to do this to yourself,” he says, “and I am not.”

He pats Ed briskly on the top of the head just once before heading for the door to the staircase.

The indignant howl is _more_ than worth the prospect of eventual revenge.

  


* * *

  


Perhaps he spoke too soon.

There aren’t any lights on in the house when he arrives that night, high-strung, thin-stretched, and raw-nerved from the remainder of a day that was, in the end, determined to beat the hell out of him. Or to beat him into hell. Or to beat him until the hell already inside of him burst open and soaked his organs and suffused every centimeter of his skin.

Whatever it did, precisely, he could use a warm yellow light and a warmer yellow whip of hair right now, but the whole house is dark when he lets himself in.

He can’t have genuinely wounded Ed’s feelings with the gentle height-related teasing—Ed used to have more than his share of mood swings in the olden days, but he’d been a teenager then; and even at their mercy, he was rarely _unreasonable_. Besides, today gave Roy no warning of any such storm on the horizon: the two of them were ribbing each other all the way down the stairs; Ed nudged Roy’s arm with his elbow and articulated “See ya” as a parting salutation; he wouldn’t snatch it all back just to prove a point over something as silly as a short joke. They don’t even really seem to bother him anymore—Roy suspects that the flailing protests these days are a combination of habit and tradition, and regardless of the particular percentage of each, they’re mostly just for show.

Then why—?

Could it be that their conversation _did_ change something? Roy supposes that one can’t exactly stumble upon the revelation that one’s ex-C.O. was a much more broadly-ranging philanderer than one expected and not have any opinion whatsoever on the topic. He tried—and succeeded at it, by any margin of measure that he knows—to keep his contributions to that discussion as painstakingly neutral as he could, but…

Was opening the door alone enough to make Ed fear what lies beyond it? Ed’s not the kind to cut and run.

Is something wrong, then? What if—

No. Roy’s not going to fling himself off that cliff; being pushed is one thing, but leaping voluntarily—

Even if something went wrong, Ed is perhaps the single fiercest combatant in a fair fight that the Amestrian military—or, to begin at the beginning, that immense personal trauma followed by a stint of training with Izumi Curtis—has ever produced. Ed can handle himself. He’s handled himself too many times before to estimate, let alone to count. Weapons won’t stop him; guns barely slow him down; there’s hardly such a thing as an _un_ fair fight from his perspective, because he evens out the playing field by stepping onto it. No one could have ambushed him, or attacked him; he won’t be lying facedown in a pool of his own blood in some filthy alleyway in downtown Central. He _won’t_. That’s an absurd prospect for so many reasons that Roy doesn’t even have time to list them.

Well. Roy does have time, actually. He’s sitting in one of his kitchen chairs, with one hand curled around the chair back tightly to ground himself, and the other laid flat on the table so that he won’t clench it in his hair like a fretting child.

Ed’s fine. They won’t turn up his corpse tomorrow, throat slit in a careless, ragged line dragging from just beneath his sharpening jaw almost down to the opposite collarbone. They won’t locate him by the crows wheeling overhead while their comrades pick at his peeling skin; they won’t find him by the stench of death and rot emanating ever-stronger from the dank little corner where he was discarded. They won’t leave it to Roy to call Al and fumble for something to say that’s not _Well, everyone knows he can take care of himself_.

He knows exactly how Ed’s eyes would look—the sheen, the glossiness. All of the light crushed out and smothered and gone, and he has so _much_ , and will the epitaphs pinpoint that if he doesn’t write his own? Blood crusted in Ed’s hair would stain it brown—would make him ordinary, would mask the gold. He’d go pale first, and then purplish, and by then the carrion birds would take an interest—

It’s Roy’s head they’re really circling, isn’t it? He’s the one in danger; he _knows_ that, but—

He glances at the clock. It’s seven, now; no word whatsoever.

He hikes himself up out of the chair and steps into the hall.

He’ll just call. He’ll keep his voice very calm and casual, idly inquire as to whether Ed made or stumbled on some other plans—no obligation; no questions; nothing intense. Just a tiny bit of subtle reconnaissance. No, not even that—just a check-in. Just a friendly hello. Just a harmless little _You’re alive, oh, thank God, you’re alive, you’re all right, and all of the cold sweat and feverish adrenaline was wasted_ —

Riza scribbled the number for the Elrics’ apartment on a scrap of paper for Roy’s reference, which he _knows_ is in here somewhere—he hasn’t had the energy to clean an area as unobtrusive as this table in the entryway since long before the trip, since long before… for a long damn time, at any rate; long enough that that note has to be buried beneath some of the mail and miscellanea.

Long enough, too, that it’s possible that Ed and Al moved in the interim, and that the number buried here somewhere won’t ring at the place Roy that visited on Sunday. He remembers that they were struggling to find a lease that would let them keep multiple cats, yes, and that Ed was fixated on making sure that Al wasn’t allergic to any of the plants nearby, and it’s unlikely that very many apartments met those criteria, but—it’s still—

It has to be _in_ here, but it’s an elusive little bastard, and why didn’t he jot it down somewhere sensible after Riza left it for him? Why didn’t she just scrawl it right on the wall in permanent marker, where he couldn’t lose it in his hour of pitiable need? Why—

He stares down at the table. He has the number: that is a fact. The question is where, and the significant corollary to that question is whether he can find it.

He thinks back, tries to fix his mind on the details, tries to solidify.

He’s pushing trinkets and papers back and forth, heedless and useless and haphazard; he’ll never find anything if he can’t be logical about the search. Frustration solves nothing; he _knows_ better; he knows that he has to breathe deeply, slowly, carefully, and think. He has to let himself accept that sometimes the universe does not act kind, does not play fair, does not offer the answers up into his hands without a protracted fight. It doesn’t matter if his heart pounds in his ears; he must, and he _can_ , stay calm. He can move things aside one at a time; he can sort through them meticulously. Riza wouldn’t have just… crumpled it and crammed it underneath the phone. She would have done something sensible and ordinary with it; she would have tucked it somewhere that he’d turn it up later if he really tried to look. She is kinder than the universe, and significantly better organized.

Roy breathes. He flattens both hands on the edge of the table and breathes again.

He draws out the phone book and flips through it swiftly, but he knows it won’t be here; he’s had to skim the pages for deliveries or repair services or cabs several times in the intervening years, and he would have noticed a slip of paper with a fateful _Elric_ written at the top.

Next, then: systematic; simple; calm. Next would be the little black leather-bound book of numbers, several of them encoded, many not—it contains most of the rest of the team’s addresses, which makes it a logical and orderly place to add Ed’s, which makes it highly likely that she put it there.

Now he just has to find _that_.

He tries to focus on the sound of his own breathing—that he can regulate; that he can slow by force. His heartbeat is a different story, pulsing faster and louder by the second, flittering through his head, resonating in his ears—

He’s fine. He’s _fine_ , which is fine, because Ed is fine, too. Everyone is fine. Everything is—

Why the hell does he have so much miserable shit on this table? What the hell is wrong with him? He can’t just—accumulate unnecessary mail for the rest of his life. What if some of it’s necessary? This pile has grown so substantial that the odds of an important notice or a critical bill winding up interred beneath the dreck chart rather high; if he misses something significant out of sheer negligence—

Such as the _phone number_ —

He has to breathe. He has to breathe slowly. He has to separate these things carefully until he can extract something like treasure—if his own belongings can be counted as such—from beneath. He can do this. He can. He’s fine. He’s fine, and it’s only going to get easier when he wrangles himself back under control, and—

And where the _hell_ did he hide this damn thing from himself? This is ludicrous; he can’t _live_ like this; he’s such an idiot for convincing himself, over and over, one lazy moment at a time, that this is all right, and he’ll wade through it, and the worst will pass—

Where the _fuck_ is that lousy, stupid, goddamn piece of shit book the one time he _really_ needs—

He swings his arm and swipes a small mountain of old mail off of the tabletop, hearing his heartbeat roar in his ears, watching the whole world blur before his unaided eyes as the anger and his damaged vision conspire to smear the whole of it into a dimly-colored mess to match the one inside him—

The sound of the pile cascading to the floor includes a strangely sharp _thump_.

He stands very still. He breathes. He clenches and unclenches his hands—once, twice, three times.

He’s fine.

He crouches down and lifts up the half-dozen envelopes on the top of the mound. His black book of telephone numbers rests serenely underneath, sprawled artfully on a bed of yet more abandoned mail.

He bites his lip hard, breathes a few more times, fishes it out, and stands. A bent corner of a foreign piece of paper protrudes from the pages midway through; he opens to the place, and—sure enough—it’s Riza’s handwriting, spelling out _Elric apt_ and a number that jostles merrily around in his brain, ringing maddeningly unfamiliar.

He holds himself as still as possible for another moment, trying to make himself relax by sheer force of will. He can feel the tension swelling in his shoulders—gathering with intent of conspiracy, most likely; he’ll feel it thrumming down his back and up his neck in rippling waves like lightning all night long. What a delightful prospect to look forward to.

He lifts the telephone receiver, cradles it against his ear with one of the beleaguered joints in question, and dials.

The line trills, and then… 

Busy.

But that’s good. That has to be good.

That means that Ed has to be there—that Ed must be physically present, and currently using the phone, which is why he isn’t here.

…or it means that one of the cats knocked the receiver off of the hook. Or that Ed was _trying_ to lift it to call for an ambulance, and whatever led him to that point has left him laid out on the floor while the phone dangles heedlessly, spinning slowly at the end of the cord—

No. Roy’s not doing this; he’s not giving in to the siren song of the terrors running rampant through his brain.

It’s a lie. He knows that it’s all a lie. He knows that the cauldron in him cooks up anger and adrenaline nonstop, in situations that call for neither; he knows that it’s all a dirty trick. He knows that this is part of the punishment. He knows that it’s irrational. He knows that he’s _wrong_.

He hangs up the phone and lays the book gently on top of one of the recent half-excavated piles. He should clean up the whole space—organize it at least a little, so that this doesn’t happen again. He should certainly pick up the portion of the disaster that’s scattered itself all over the floor.

He looks down at it. He looks at his hands braced against the edges of the table, curled there so that he won’t have to watch them shake.

He turns around and walks into the kitchen, where he sits down in one of the chairs and stares at the wall.

He should do a lot of things. He should have done a lot of things a long time ago; he should…

Ed’s probably fine. Ed has a _life_. Even if it’s not especially intensive just now, as he’s still sorting out the rubble of the world that he thought he wanted after it collapsed around him, Ed has a life, and he exists entirely independently of Roy’s sordid little melodrama. Ed never agreed to be cast in this role; he signed no contracts; he committed to a grand total of zero weekend matinees. Ed came of his own volition, and he can leave whenever he pleases. He owes Roy nothing. His time and the ways that he decides to spend it belong to him and him alone.

It’s not Ed’s fault that after a single weekend and an unexpected lunch, his absence rankles like an open sore.

This is what Ed’s taking refuge from. This is what he’s avoiding. He doesn’t want to be Brigadier General Roy Mustang’s security blanket.

Roy doesn’t blame him. Who in their right mind would consign themselves to this? Ed should run. He should run to the furthest reaches of the continent if he has to; he should push the edges of the universe trying to escape. Roy has no claim to him; Roy has no right to ask this of him; Roy has no cause to beg for kindness from _anyone_ , let alone a human being of Ed’s quality. It’s brutally ironic, in its way; it’s darkly funny that still, now, after everything that Roy has been and done, he has the audacity to wish that Ed would stay.

Most likely he should eat something, but the prospect makes his stomach twirl, less like a ballerina than like a drunkard who’s worse off than he bargained for, trying to turn on his heel and realizing his mistake. Roy’s more familiar with the second one, as it happens.

He folds his hands, looks at them, untangles them, and folds them again. Nothing to be done for it: they’re still the same. They’re still his. They’re still blood-soaked and battered, rough at the fingertips, torn through with the white scars crawling across their centers. It’s good that Bradley cut him open there—good that he’s marked now. Good that it’s evident. He’s never been naïve enough to think that scars signify anything on their own, but Ed’s, for instance, aren’t ugly like these are. Ed’s don’t look like a warning.

Roy is projecting. Roy knows that he’s projecting. But it’s better than letting himself think.

It’s better than considering the possibility—the _probability_ , the extraordinarily high likelihood—that the real reason that Ed’s not here is because Ed, who is a good and decent specimen of their species, remembered why Roy’s resolve is disintegrating in the first place. It’s a safe bet that Ed remembered what Roy’s done, and what that means, and realized that he doesn’t want to be anywhere near it.

That’s fine. That’s good. Roy never should have been selfish enough to let him stay; Roy knew that the right thing all along was to push him out the door before the slow-seeping ruin of this place began to taint him. It’s a wonder that Roy hasn’t corrupted him by now—hasn’t poisoned all of the things that make him so damn wonderful in the first place; hasn’t leached out the very kindness that brought him here; hasn’t—

The phone rings, shrill and violent in the silence, and Roy startles so hard that he slams one kneecap against the underside of the table.

That’s fine, too, damn it; that’s better than fine; that’s some infinitesimal increment of what he deserves, and he’s glad of it; he’s grateful; he’s… 

Dragging his miserable body up out of the chair and into the hall, picking up the phone, raising it to his ear, and uttering his own name regardless of how much he hates it these days.

“Hey,” Ed says.

Roy stares down at the little black book that he abandoned.

At least—

This is good. This is good, because it means that Ed’s all right; it confirms that none of the twisted possibilities that Roy’s tormented brain had conjured have come true.

Yet.

“Sorry,” Ed is going on, as if he has ever done a damn thing to Roy that merits an apology. Well—as if he’s done anything _recently_. “I went home first to feed the stupid cats, and Al called, and he was telling me all about his classes and stuff, and I completely lost track of time. I looked up at the clock just now and practically had a heart attack. Did you eat already?”

“No,” Roy says, and then deliberately bangs his bruised knee against one of the legs of the table—not hard enough for Ed to hear it, hopefully; just enough to rouse another spurt of pain. “But I… I think it’s probably for the best. Don’t you? If you stay home.”

The quiet but for Ed’s breathing lasts long enough that Roy wants to slam the knee a hell of a lot harder. How could he possibly forget that contrariness is Ed’s bread and butter, and anything remotely mistakable for condescension is his whole life’s nemesis?

“What the fuck?” Ed says, which sounds almost open-minded, at this point. “Why are you trying to get rid of me again?”

“I want you to have a life,” Roy says. “As close to normal as you’re capable of—or as close to normal as you’d like it to be; somewhere along that spectrum.” He looks down at the book again, scrabbling for the right words for this—for the best ones that he can muster. “I want _you_ to want to have a life. I want you to want things for yourself. You’re… Between who you had to be, and then Alphonse recovering, and this, now—you’re defining yourself by how helpful you can be to other people. That’s not…” He swallows. “You’re so much more than that. You have to know that—deep down, somewhere. It’s logical when you really look at who you are, and what you’re capable of. Please don’t waste any more of your time on me, Ed. Go out there and find something that makes you _happy_.”

“Shut up,” Ed says. “Why are you doing this? Earlier you were… something happened. You had a bad day. Right?” He draws in a breath and blows it out before Roy can answer. “Okay. That’s fine. We can work with that. Just stop being such a damn _idiot_ about pushing away everybody who’s got the slightest interest in believing in you for five minutes, and—”

“What’s the point?” Roy asks, keeping his voice low. “If I slide back to square one any time that I’m faced with something like adversity, all of the belief in the world couldn’t solve this. Salve this. Anything. Whatever you’re hoping to do.” He tries to smile. “This is a lost cause, Ed. You’ve carried enough of those over the years; I don’t want to add one more. Just… don’t come back. It wouldn’t mean that you’re giving up. It’s what I want.”

“Fuck what you want,” Ed says. “You’re obviously not in any kind of state to take care of yourself, so your decisions—”

“I’m perfectly rational,” Roy says. “And, as you’ve noticed on numerous occasions that involved exchanges of the word ‘old’, most certainly an adult, and—”

“Like hell are you rational!” Ed says, and even in this dim hallway over a mile away, Roy can practically see him baring his teeth. “You haven’t been rational in—well, shit, not since Friday, that I’ve seen. Probably not in weeks. Since whenever you got back, since whenever this started to _eat_ you—”

“What do _you_ want?” Roy says. “What is it doing for you? What are you getting out of any of it?” His pulse starts to beat faster again despite his concerted efforts to keep calm. “It wasn’t your war; it isn’t your fight; it isn’t your nightmare or your headache, and— _why_ , Ed? Why this, why me, why—”

“Shut up,” Ed says, louder, and there’s something sickly satisfying about forcing him to raise his voice. “Because you fucking _need_ somebody, and I’m here, and I—” He chokes, hisses. “Fuck you. Because I don’t have anything else. Is that what you wanted to hear, Mustang? Is that what you wanted me to say? That you’re some kind of stopgap so that I don’t have to figure out what direction I want my stupid life to go?” He huffs out a breath so derisive that Roy expects acid in his eardrum. “Even if it was that simple, what the fuck’s so wrong with it?”

Roy spreads his hand on the tabletop and leans on it, closing his eyes—and then opening them again to fix them on the wallpaper, which has much less of a tendency to spatter blood all over him than the shadows on the insides of his eyelids do. “You shouldn’t—”

“Fuck you,” Ed says. “I’m not your damn employee anymore. ‘Should’ doesn’t mean shit. Why are you fighting this so hard? You think I’m gonna quit if you get all patronizing and try to keep me at arm’s length like you’ve been doing to everybody else?” Another audible hint of a snarl. “Get fucked. You know me better than that.”

“It is remarkable,” Roy says, “that you juxtaposed those two sentiments so directly.”

“You’re a hypocrite,” Ed says. “And a coward, and an idiot who just did _exactly_ what I said wasn’t gonna work.”

Roy closes his eyes again, and it washes over him all at once—the bite of the words, the sting of the shrapnel, the deadening bitterness of the ash in his mouth. The heavy smoke and the sharp tang of iron mingling at the bottom of every indrawn breath.

“I know,” he says.

“Goddamnit, Roy,” Ed says. “God _damn_ it, you’re so—”

“Hopeless,” Roy says.

“ _No_ ,” Ed says. “Fucking—I don’t know. Shaken. Damaged. Something. You’re not fucking broken, okay? Not yet. Not on my watch.”

“Stay home,” Roy says, memorizing the wallpaper for the millionth time. He keeps his voice low. He keeps his hand flat on the table. “Have a night to yourself. Pet the cats. Or mutter obscenities at them—or alternate between the two, if you prefer. Be an ordinary person for a few hours. Don’t worry yourself about me and how sorry I might be feeling for myself at any given moment. Just… live.”

Ed’s quiet for long enough that Roy almost dares to hope that he hung up.

No such luck.

“You realize,” Ed says slowly, “how much that sounds like a goodbye, right? Like the kind you make before you do something _real_ stupid?”

“It’s not stupid,” Roy says.

“It’s not fair, either,” Ed fires back. “It doesn’t fix anything, and it doesn’t even up the scales, and it won’t change a single minute of what you did back then. All it does is take you out of the time you’ve got right now—the time where you can _do_ something about it.”

Roy can’t—do anything, that is. Not like this. And if the inertia of it is too great to overcome; if the weight simply keeps increasing, and his shoulders bow, and his spine gives way—

“Roy,” Ed says. “You owe me one. Equivalent fucking exchange. You owe me one for the weekend, or for lunch, or—whatever. Okay?”

Roy squeezes his eyes shut again. Bullet casings clink together like wind chimes, raining on the parched expanses of the sand inside his head. “I suppose.”

“Close enough,” Ed says. “Promise me.”

Roy opens his eyes. Still no illuminating explanatory notes adorn the wallpaper. What a shame. “Promise you what?”

“That you won’t do anything tonight,” Ed says, “that I’ll hate you for tomorrow.”

The second-worst thing is that Ed’s right—Roy owes him that, and more; a thousand times more. None of them would have made it this far, or anywhere, without him.

The first-worst thing is that even if Ed didn’t have a point, he would blame himself for anything irreversible and perfectly justified that Roy might undertake right now. Ed would consider it a personal failure, despite the obvious, rather critical detail that not managing to budge a boulder the size of a house casts no aspersions on a single mover’s strength.

“Fine,” Roy says.

Silence again, although not for very long.

“Shit,” Ed says, voice faint. “I miss the days when I was young and stupid enough to think that you were just an asshole.”

“I _am_ an asshole,” Roy says.

“Well, yeah,” Ed says. “But you’re a lot of other things, too.” He draws a breath deep enough that it stutters like static on the other end of the line. “Say it again. All the way through.”

“Say what?” Roy says. “‘I promise I won’t kill myself tonight’?”

Silence.

“You know,” Ed says, less than steadily, “now that you mention it, the asshole part is pretty big.”

“I think it’s close to seventy percent of my personality most days,” Roy says.

“I think you suck at statistics,” Ed says. He pauses. “I think I suck at encouragement.”

“Considering the circumstances,” Roy manages, “I’d say you’re doing all right.”

“Get something to eat,” Ed says. “You might feel a little better.”

Roy looks at the wall for a few seconds more, rolling the words around on the surface of his tongue.

“You can’t save me,” he says.

“I know,” Ed says. Roy can hear that he’s trying for a smile this time. “But if you’d quit trying to give up every goddamn day, I might be able to help you save yourself.”

“ _Why_?” Roy says, for the thousandth time, the hundred-thousandth— “Why bother? Why keep trying? Why pour so much effort int—”

Ed huffs out half a breath. “Why not?”

“There are so many nobler causes,” Roy says, resisting the urge to grind his teeth. “There are so many better ways to pay whatever imaginary debts you think you owe, and so many more deserving—”

“But you’re the one I picked,” Ed says. He clicks his tongue. “Ain’t that a bitch? Listen. Get some dinner and then go to bed, and then we’ll do this again tomorrow, and it’ll be a little bit easier.”

“You don’t know that,” Roy says. “You can’t.”

“Nope,” Ed says. “Nobody knows anything for sure. Which is why you can’t know that it’ll be worse, which is why you’re just gonna have to shut up and see what happens.”

Roy leans his weight on his hand. The table creaks softly in protest. He sympathizes. “My specialty,” he says.

“Yeah,” Ed says. “No kidding.”

He goes quiet for a moment more, and Roy tightens his grip on the phone and looks intently at the unmarked wallpaper; there is only so much of this that a man can take.

Ed clears his throat. “Okay,” he says. “G’night, Roy.”

“Goodnight, Ed,” Roy says. There aren’t words that can encompass what he feels, and trying to crush it into insufficient language would trivialize it, somehow, so he leaves it unsaid. With any luck, Ed will hear the gratitude in Roy’s soft exhale before he hangs up the phone.

Not that Roy has ever had much luck, at least not when it counted, but maybe—maybe—just this once.

  


* * *

  


He knows that it’s not cause and effect. He knows that life’s not cut and dry, and few phenomena have simple explanations. He knows that a warm body on the other side of the bed is not a cure for nightmares.

But he also knows that he wakes up soaked in sweat and shivering, with a plea and a sob and a scream knotted in his throat, pressed one on the other so closely that their edges meld together and then sharpen into knives. He knows that he doesn’t deserve to utter any of them.

And he can’t help thinking, in the first instant of shuddering lucidity, that this didn’t happen when Ed was here.

Not that it couldn’t have—he can’t know that. But it didn’t. How much does that count for? How much can that mean?

‘Luck’ is an egoistical, pattern-seeking interpretation of coincidence. Ed is not a good luck charm, although it’s tempting to mention the thought in passing just to prod him into protesting the comparison to little trinkets tacked onto one’s keyring and slipped into one’s pocket.

It’s more likely that Ed’s disruption of Roy’s regular schedule—and of the schedule of his trains of thought, which ordinarily only have one destination—startled Roy’s brain out of its natural habit, and it was the anomaly itself, rather than the specifics of the change, that spared him these last few days. The companionship probably wasn’t hurting, but the presence of another human being alone won’t exorcise any of the demons.

And even if it did—even if Roy had some sort of empirical proof that another person, or that Ed in particular, ameliorated the self-inflicted symptoms of the disease that he has brought onto himself… what then? What damn right would he have to ask for solace in the form of more of the time and energy that Ed never should have offered in the first place?

The dampest parts of his shirt are the center of his chest and the small of his back, but rolling onto his side makes him feel like he’s exposing his back to the doorway. If he gets up and turns the light on, the game’s over—the night’s over; the remotest chance of slipping back towards sleep will flit across the gleaming bathroom tiles and into the heating vent with the last of the shadows, and then it will be gone.

He tries to wait out the paranoia despite the way it prickles at the back of his neck. There’s no one here. He _knows_ there’s no one here. Even someone extremely serious about getting to him, with a great deal of experience muffling their approach, would have had a hell of a time with the deadbolts or the windowpanes; the odds of someone making it to the stairs are negligibly low, and several of the steps creak, and…

But negligible isn’t nothing, obviously. One instance or another has to account for the tiny percentage points; the numbers come from somewhere, and…

  


* * *

  


The first thing Riza says when she sees him is “What happened?”

He’s fortunate, he supposes, that she has the sense to keep her voice low and the grace to continue moving towards his desk instead of stopping in her tracks. It’s not that the others won’t notice eventually, but the longer that he can delay that inconvenient inevitability, the better.

“Nothing,” he says, turning his pen, since really that’s the truth.

“Then what didn’t happen?” she asks, laying a crisp stack of folders in the center of the desk blotter, which forces him to raise his hands. “What that had happened over the weekend ceased to happen?”

She’s giving him the eye. The fact that he deserves it doesn’t make it any easier to bear.

“It’s complicated,” he says.

She’s giving him both eyes, simultaneously, with such intent that he feels like his skin is splitting under the scrutiny.

“Does it have to do with Ed?” she asks.

He attempts at a roguish grin, which likely looks grotesque, but the thought must count for something. “Isn’t that what I said?”

The eyes narrow slightly. “Roy—”

“I know,” he says.

“No,” she says, “you don’t. You think you do, because you think you know everything, but you can’t… handle this. Not alone.” She works her jaw for a second before she draws another breath. “You’ve tried everything in your power up until now, and none of it has worked. This time it’s too big to carry. If he can help, then… let him.”

Roy doesn’t feel that he can be blamed for staring when his longest-known and best-trusted friend just gave him the opposite of the advice that he expected. It’s probably a good thing that the rest of the team is still straggling in slowly; he must look like a child whose lollipop was snatched out of his hand the instant that he moved to lick it, or like a dog less intelligent than Hayate the moment after you’ve pretended to throw the ball.

She notices his bewilderment—not that it would be easy to miss—and takes pity on him. It’s the eyebrows that give it away; they dip just slightly when her aspect shifts from iron to something slightly softer.

“This is the long war, sir,” she says. “Nothing’s unfair. Take whatever you can get and run with it as far as it’ll take you.”

He opens his mouth to begin listing things that could go wrong when following that philosophy. The complete roster would take him several hours to complete, but he’s learned over time to prioritize the biggest items near the top, so—

“This is the agenda for the meeting at eleven,” she says before he can muster a syllable, extracting a sheet of paper from her clipboard and flattening it on top of the files. Her eyes linger on his for a long moment. “Would you like me to come with you?”

In order to finagle her into a meeting of generals, he’d have to invent some reason that her presence is required, such as a talking point that he’d need her to testify about—which, of course, she knows perfectly well. The question she’s really asking is whether the comfort of knowing that she’d have his back in case something went wrong would outweigh the inconvenience of developing some plausible cause to pull her in.

“Thank you,” he says, meaning it, “but I’ll survive.”

He hopes he means that, too. He supposes that whatever happens at eleven will decide.

  


* * *

  


Major General Belmor waits until they’re three-quarters of the way down the agenda—to which Roy has been clinging like a lifeline, it must be admitted; but with his hands curled tight around each other beneath the table and his shoulders forcibly relaxed—and most of the others are engaged in a heated debate about the particulars of which traffic laws should apply to military police vehicles.

Then Belmor leans over towards Roy, with a glimmer in his eye that Roy’s not sure he likes.

Well—Roy’s sure he doesn’t like it. He’s just not sure how much. He likes very little that happens in this room.

“I admire you,” Belmor whispers.

Shit.

Roy’s internal monologue, which is composed mostly of a series of synonyms for his initial reaction, goes unnoticed. At least he hasn’t lost his touch for holding his face stiller than a portrait when it matters the most.

“I can’t imagine being so gung-ho about Ishvalan rights after everything you’ve been through over there,” Belmor is saying. “I hear a couple of them tried to kill you the last time you visited—when you were there as a _diplomat_. I mean, principles are all good and well, but when their answer to your generosity is attempted murder—”

“It was hardly generosity,” Roy says, voice as low and as neutral as he can bear. “Just part of the job.”

“Remind me never to join Intelligence,” Belmor says, which is very funny, in a sick sort of way, given how long he’s lorded over Records. “I couldn’t take it as calmly as you do.”

Roy glances sideways, but there’s still quite a lot of gesturing going on at the head of the table, and if he’s not mistaken, Major General Lyddan is drawing a careful diagram of an intersection to make a point.

“The actions of a few,” Roy says through the tightness in his chest and the haze encroaching at the corners of his eyes, “don’t define the intentions of a population.” The sleep deprivation’s catching up—in the nick of time, he bites his tongue on _I can only hope that they find it within themselves to think the same of me._

Belmor’s never voiced a strong opinion on Ishval, but Belmor’s never voiced a strong opinion on anything. That doesn’t mean that he doesn’t harbor them—likely it implies the opposite, but he’s playing a significantly slower game, and he knows that he won’t win the friends he wants long-term by staking a claim to one side or another of a controversy. Absolute neutrality makes you look blameless by default and keeps all the others guessing. It’s a tactic that Roy has used, of course, but it’s not as though he invented it, and it’s not as though…

The assassination attempts are not exactly public knowledge, but they did feature in one or two of the newspapers. Mentioning them does not constitute involvement; even plying Roy for a reaction like this isn’t cause for suspicion.

…at least not yet.

“It’s all good and well to stand on ceremony here,” Belmor says, and he’s smiling with the sort of clipped cordiality that one expects in this room; the expression doesn’t touch his eyes. “But to travel all that way only to have them answer your desire to help with a series of gunshots—how is a man supposed to stay impartial after that?”

Gun barrels contain a very special sliver of oblivion. Roy spent a long time with that one—a long time looking into it; a long time looking into the wide red eyes behind it.

“No one’s impartial,” he says, forcing the sounds out across his tongue. He can’t say anything too forceful; can’t say anything that could _mean_ anything—and the echoes in his head of the footsteps in the hall, the voices coming closer, the wet hitching of Emre’s breath growing faster by the second as his eyes darted towards the door— “I—I suppose we all just have to do the best we can.”

He digs his fingernails into his palms, into his knuckles, into the meat of his thumbs—anywhere they’ll gain traction; anywhere it hurts; he has to ground himself here, now, in this reality, in the timeline that determines his future from here—

“Grumman trained you far too well,” Belmor says, and the smile hasn’t flickered; he must be oblivious to most of what Roy’s trying to endure. Possibly he just thinks that Roy’s fumbling for words because he’s choked up, either from the sheer emotional weight of his declaration or because he’s still struggling with the incidents that necessitated saying it. One of those is, oddly enough, more or less true. The lies always sell better with some honesty folded in. “That was a perfect soundbyte.”

“I offer consultations on the side,” Roy says. His pulse beats in his fingertips; he can’t think of blood, or flesh, or bone. Just pain. Simple as that. Pain is real, at least when it’s in your hands. At least when the welts are on your skin. “Incendiary rhetoric costs an extra thousand cens an hour.”

Belmor sits back, and there’s a hint of genuine amusement in the flash of a grin—Roy wins this round, although the victory tastes rather stale, given that he was the only one who had anything at stake in the first place.

“I’ll keep that in mind,” Belmor says.

Roy smiles back, broadly and brightly, and parts his knees so that the hot trickle of blood that he’s drawn from his right hand will stain the carpet, not his clothes.

  


* * *

  


“Could you mutilate the left next time?” Riza asks. Bless her for waiting outside despite his instructions not to come. Bless her for having paper tissues in her trouser pockets to blot the scrape before it seeps through the inside of his own pocket, where he slipped his hand to hide it on his way out. Bless her for not saying the word _babysitter_ aloud even if he can see it printed clearly on her face. “The pile of unsigned requisition forms is already tall enough to start plotting attacks on the city.”

“The city deserves it,” Roy says, leading the way towards one of the less-popular restrooms. How terribly convenient that he has them all organized by usage rates in his head. It’s not as though he ought to be using that brainpower for anything else, after all. “I would be delighted to share my personal nightmare with the populace. They’ll appreciate me more after that, if they make it out alive.”

“Surely there are better ways to die than at the mercy of a paperwork creature the size of a small building,” Riza says, utterly calmly, and he loves her so fiercely some days that he doesn’t think his ribcage can contain it.

“Plenty,” Roy says. He shoulders his way through the door to the men’s room. “Shall I meet you back at the office?”

She rummages in her pocket again and wordlessly offers a bandage, which he takes—feeling like he’s been struck around the head, but he supposes that that’s par for the course for this damn day.

“Thank you,” he says, numb-tongued and helpless, and it doesn’t even begin to speak to the debt.

Tissues is one thing—Riza’s always erred on the side of overpreparedness—but bandages are entirely another. She predicted that this was going to happen. She was ready. And she waited outside to bail him out even though he refused her first offer of assistance, thinking he could do it on his own.

He’s never deserved her—not a day of his life.

“You’re welcome,” she says.

He isn’t. Or he shouldn’t be.

He smiles and lets the door fall shut between them.

  


* * *

  


When he steps back in, the office is empty—except for his chair, which is occupied.

“Lieutenant Hawkeye had to go do something on her lunch,” Ed calls, swinging himself back and forth and then through a full-circle rotation of the axle of the chair. “She made me promise not to touch any of your stuff.”

“If there are boot scuffs on my drawers,” Roy says, attempting to square his shoulders as subtly as possible, “I’ll hold both of you responsible.”

“I’m gonna pretend you said ‘thank you’,” Ed says. As Roy approaches, he slouches lower in the seat, grinning up at Roy like a benevolent demon.

“I fully support having a vivid imaginative life outside of work,” Roy says.

“For the sandwiches,” Ed says, pointing at a white paper bag that Roy hadn’t noticed on account of the modest explosion of gold and blue that has parked its remarkable posterior in his desk chair. “I asked them to put extra lettuce in yours to make up for the grease yesterday.”

Roy stares at the bag. Inanimate objects tend to find unwavering attention less disconcerting than people do. “Even if the Emperor is paying your brother’s tuition,” he says, “I can’t imagine that you’re making enough money here that buying me lunch every day is trivial.”

Ed braces his metal knee against the edge of Roy’s desk, the better to turn the chair forty degrees to the right, and then forty to the left. “Always with the petty cash with you,” he says. “And I do mean _petty_. How do you know I’m not submitting the receipts for reimbursement, anyway?”

“Because I know that it would torment you to have to lie to Lieutenant-Colonel Ross,” Roy says. “Or at least that it would make you feel guilty enough that you wouldn’t do it for the price of a sandwich. Which begs the question of—”

“What happened to your hand?” Ed asks. “Because that’s the only question that I figure is relevant right now.”

Roy’s had the right one in his pocket since he bandaged it. He made opening the door with his left hand look natural and then slid it into his other pocket in an attempt to mask the discrepancy.

Ed is far more observant now than he ever was when Roy would have found it useful. Roy supposes that that shouldn’t come as a surprise.

“It’s not relevant,” Roy says. “Do we have to trespass onto the roof again, or can we eat in here like civilized human beings?”

“There’s nobody civilized in this whole damn place,” Ed says, hiking himself forward and up to his feet in a single mesmerizingly smooth motion. “You and I both know that.” He snatches up the bag. “Got a better idea, though. C’mon.”

It’s been a hell of a day by now, and Roy just… can’t help it.

He follows.

Ed leads the way through the halls again, but this time their destination is a little courtyard, enclosed by walls on all sides, that Roy never would have imagined might be tucked away near the intersection of the quartermaster’s office and the motor pool’s repair supplies. It’s no wonder, in retrospect, that this area receives so little attention, but he still thinks that Ed deserves quite a lot of credit for peering through the grime-streaked windows in this part of the building long enough to notice this particular treasure. Roy doubts that anyone else has ever realized that it’s here.

It’s a pleasant spot—partly shaded by the walls, with a few white marble benches and some tasteful foliage; ivy climbs up around one of the window-frames, which does wonders for concealing the filthiness of the pane.

The conversation is even more pleasant: Ed gives Roy the lowdown on all of the shenanigans, academic and otherwise, that Al has been up to. Evidently there are an inordinate number of cats in the Xingese capitol in need of petting, and in addition to several fascinating classes about culture and alkahestry, Al is receiving private tutoring from the Emperor himself on how to swear in the native language. Roy hopes that he’ll include that on his C.V. later; morbid curiosity alone will land him every interview he could ask for, and from there he’ll be a shoe-in the instant that he turns on the Elric charm.

On the subject of the mystical charisma in question, Ed nods to Roy’s sandwich. “Is it okay? I asked ’em to make it basically a salad with bread around it.”

“What have I ever done to deserve this?” Roy asks.

Ed arches an eyebrow.

“Kidding,” Roy says. “It’s fine. A bit… fibrous, but I won’t complain about free lunch.”

“You just did,” Ed says.

“Only obliquely,” Roy says.

“Obliquely counts,” Ed says.

“I appreciate your commitment to my health,” Roy says. “Even when it’s literally difficult to swallow. How’s that?”

Ed smirks. “Smartass.” Just as Roy starts to revel, he nods to the hand holding the sandwich. “That happen last night, or during the meeting?”

“The meeting,” Roy says, trying to prevent his shoulders from tensing in anticipation of the rest of this conversation—a doomed battle, but he feels that a valiant effort matters of its own merit.

Ed stares intently at the bandage for three more seconds without blinking.

Then he sits back and shrugs.

“All right,” he says.

Roy blinks, unsure if it’s safe yet to relax. “All… right?”

“Yeah,” Ed says. “Just ’cause I keep bringing you lunch doesn’t mean I’m your _mom_ , Mustang.”

“You’re not?” Roy says, laying his free hand across his chest. “Egads. My whole life is a lie.”

“Shut up,” Ed says, but the laugh curls the corners of his mouth and crinkles up his eyes before he can swallow the sound of it. “You’re such a dweeb. Better make it up to me by makin’ dinner.”

“Is that equivalent?” Roy asks.

“Close enough,” Ed says.

Roy rearranges some of the components of his sandwich to alter the lettuce composition of his next bite. “I’ll keep that in mind.”

  


* * *

  


Roy’s brain keeps skipping like a scratched record. He supposes that that’s what he is, in a floridly metaphorical sort of sense: he’s a damaged record of everything that’s happened, and every successive turn on his axis wears him further down. The notes don’t ring quite true anymore; the melody’s falling out of tune as time and age and usage warp him ever more severely. He’s not sure he remembers, let alone resembles, his original shape.

Somehow he makes it through the afternoon. Ed will be have to be held accountable to Riza for breaking his promise: the secondary flask of brandy that Roy had squirreled away in the top-right-hand drawer of his desk has mysteriously disappeared. Then again, Roy supposes that it’s also possible that Riza herself is responsible for the thievery; and it’s equally possible that they conspired, and they’ll cover for each other.

He finds himself at home again, staring out the kitchen window at the dark. Wisps of recollection of a trip to the market filter in; someone elbowed him in the arm hard enough to bruise, and in the instant between the bloom of pain and the apology, his throat stopped, and he saw _red_. He’s dangerous—in a different way now than he was before. He’s not in control anymore.

He surfaced with time to haul himself back under wraps, however, and made his purchases, and spirited them away. The stove burners are lit; the pots are on them; several ingredients are already assembled. Someone must have done this. He remembers basil. He can smell it. He must have been the one cooking.

Basil’s a good start: hard to go wrong with it. Besides which, unless he scorches everything past recognition, odds are good that Ed will eat it even if it wasn’t made with much of any finesse.

As if summoned by the thought, a knock at the door shakes Roy out of some of the blurry malaise—enough for him to realize that his sauté pan is too hot, and the oven isn’t set quite hot enough. A twist of each hand solves both, and then he’s starting towards the door, almost eager until he remembers…

Everything. That the world is sick. That he’s a target. That he can’t afford to assume the best—that he can’t afford to assume anything except the opposite.

He tugs a glove out of his pocket, slips it onto his left hand, tucks the hand into the pocket instead, and sidles up to the door without a sound. He pauses, breathes, runs the pad of his thumb ever so lightly over the tip of his middle finger—

And peers through the peephole, spots an unmistakable flash of bright gold, and sighs.

The glove comes off and reprises its original position in the bottom of his pocket; he opens the door with some cleverness dancing on the end of his tongue about how Ed always arrives right before the food’s ready.

“Here,” Ed says, holding out something that Roy cannot even hope to identify.

But Roy was raised properly, or something like properly, or close enough when it counts, so he opens his palm for it and says “Thank you” anyway.

It’s… a… beanbag?

“It’s got foam and silicone and stuff in it,” Ed says. “All the different materials are different sizes. So you can squish the shit out of it, and different stuff’ll compress depending on how tight your grip is. And it’s a lot easier to get a new one of these than it is to get you a new hand.”

“You’re too kind,” Roy says, and it’s true, whether or not he’s slightly baffled by the oddly-shaped item resting in his palm. As he steps back out of the doorway, he gives it an experimental squeeze—which confirms that it is, in fact, rather satisfying to grasp, but—

“You’ve got nice hands,” Ed says. “It’d be a shame to mess ’em up.” While Roy’s torn between thanking him, pointing out that the hands in question are already ruined by just about every metric known to man, and sputtering wordlessly, Ed shoulders in past him and starts to kick his shoes off, dropping the small duffel bag slung over his shoulder onto the floor. “What’s for dinner?”

“I’m not sure,” Roy says.

Ed spares him a skeptical glance before sauntering right on into the kitchen. Following him is substantially easier than trying to explain that Roy’s recollection of his own life is increasingly pockmarked with inexplicable gaps.

“Damn,” Ed says of the little saucepan where the cheese has melted beautifully, and of the meticulously-sectioned broccoli waiting for the sauté pan to stop spitting directly at Roy’s face. “Are you trying to make up for the sandwich-shaped salad I forced you to eat earlier?”

“Obviously,” Roy says. “If I didn’t have a nefarious plan to stymy you at every turn, you’d be suspicious. At least this one is relatively low-impact.”

Ed pauses, eyes darting both ways, and sniffs deeply twice. “…potatoes?”

“Yes,” Roy says. At least he remembers that much for sure.

“Where are you hiding them?” Ed asks.

“In the closet,” Roy says, crossing past him to stir the cheese before it starts to do ungodly things to the sides of the pot. “No, wait, the cupboard. No, the basement. Why don’t you sit down? It’ll only be another minute.”

“I hate hangin’ around while other people are working,” Ed says. “What can I help with?”

It should be strange. All of it should be strange. Standing at the kitchen counter, elbow to elbow with Edward Elric, putting the finishing touches on an honest-to-goodness homemade meal should be strange. Sitting down to eat it with him should be stranger. The ease of their conversations should set off alarm bells, shouldn’t it? Blaring horns and flashing lights and unequivocal signs; someone should be shouting _Mayday_ ; there should be an S.O.S. scratched out across the old scars fading from the back of Roy’s hand. Every time he glances down and sees those hands, he should notice it—not assess them, idly, and wonder what it is about them that Ed defines as nice.

What does that mean, anyway? Perhaps the better question—how _much_ does that mean? They’re friends, at this point; there’s no denying it. Two ex-coworkers who semi-regularly share meals fit neatly into the center of that loose societal categorization, to say nothing of how regularly they’ve recently shared a bed. Roy would prefer to say nothing of that part, as it happens. It complicates things.

Roy is slowly waking to the part of himself that wants it to be complicated.

But he won’t—he shouldn’t, and he won’t. _Can’t_ is, unfortunately, out of the question: he misses the days when he believed that there were lows that he wouldn’t stoop to and new heights of devilry that he couldn’t reach. Roy has learned that he has remarkable range when it comes to indiscretions.

The point is, it doesn’t matter what Ed thinks is _nice_ , in hands or any other aspect of a man, because Roy will not be putting these two upon him for any reason, medical emergencies notwithstanding.

“What’s for dessert?” Ed asks the instant that his plate is clear.

“I’d suggest a drink,” Roy says, “but lately someone insists on repossessing all of my stores.”

The split-second flash of guilt before Ed scowls confirms that hypothesis. “Well—fuck off. You shouldn’t be drinking at work for all kinds of reasons—least of all the fact that you _drive home_ —and you know it.”

“Some days,” Roy says, “my options run rather thin.”

“I know,” Ed says. “Those are the days you gotta get creative. Or just get _out_. Five minutes helps. Or it might. Or it’s worth a shot to avoid the other kind of shot. You know what?”

The rapid-fire release of Ed’s thought processes used to make Roy dizzy, but these days the frantic rhythm almost seems to match up with his heartbeat, and somehow that makes it… comforting.

“What?” Roy asks before that rabbit-hole yawns any wider and swallows him whole.

“Dessert’d counteract your sorta-salad anyway,” Ed says. “You’re eating healthy from now on.”

Roy stares at him, blankly.

Ed stares back, although with much less blankness and much more of a shamelessly defiant challenge.

“I may be the only man alive,” Roy says, “who has been adopted _twice_ —once by someone a decade his junior.”

“By my count, it’s fourteen,” Ed says. “Look, I get it. Getting your shit together’s hard. I still don’t have my shit together, and the part of it that I sort of have in a kind-of-a-pile that I kicked into one place—I had a lot of help getting that far. So… it’s my turn to help you. Just for a little while, while you need it.”

Roy looks at him for another second, and then stands and starts collecting the dishes. “Would you like pie or ice cream tomorrow?”

Ed’s smirk is difficult to look at directly; Roy has to sneak little glances out of the corner of his eye.

“Surprise me,” Ed says.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> o hai, first inklings of the plot that inserted itself into this monstrosity while I was distracted and then insisted on driving the entire fic. This one goes out to everyone who's ever wanted me to write political intrigue, thought I was gonna do it because I heavily implied that I would, and then was disappointed when I was like "Guess what, here's some more rom-com shenanigans~!" X'D
> 
> It's really not my forte, but I think I did kinda sorta okay in this one, so I'm looking forward to hearing what you all think when it starts to heat up. c: Also, the main sequence of this chapter might just be my favorite part of the entire fic, so I hope you enjoy it! c:
> 
> That said, if you have a particular object that you employ when characters in a fanfic act insufferably stupid, such as a specific pillow that you like to scream into, you may want to have it handy for this one. X'D THESE TWO ARE HOPELESS.

“I thought of something,” Roy says as Ed is plowing through a slice of cherry pie on Wednesday night. It keeps staining his mouth, and Roy keeps trying not to notice, and all of this was a terrible mistake.

“That’s a good start,” Ed says. “It got any other things tagging along with it, or just the one?”

Roy raises an eyebrow at him until he starts to snicker.

“ _Okay_ ,” Ed says. “Pray friggin’ tell, what’s on your semi-legendary mind, Mustang?”

That compliment skims off of the surface of Roy’s ego and bounces away into the ether. Surely it was meant entirely sarcastically anyway.

“I want to go to the theater,” Roy says.

It’s fascinating—when he’s watching Ed’s face closely to monitor reactions, he can almost hear Ed’s thoughts as clearly as if they were being spoken aloud.

 _The_ theater _? You know that’s a hell of a lot of people, right? And a lot of unpredictable noises, and a lot of—well, shit. Of course you know; you’re Roy Mustang. You never do anything without thinking it over until you’ve turned it inside out. You thought about it, and considered all the consequences, and decided it was worth the risk._

“Okay,” Ed says, slowly. He actually sets down his fork, which is an unsung miracle if Roy’s ever seen one. “You… want some help finding a date?”

“In a manner of speaking,” Roy says. He sits back and folds his arms. “Are you available on Friday night?”

It’s a good thing that Ed put the fork down a moment ago; by his expression, he would have dropped it just now if it was still in his hand. “You want _me_ to go to the theater with you?”

Roy draws a deep breath and summons the honesty that this sad little farce deserves: “I don’t want to go with anyone else.”

He doesn’t add _Because you make me feel safe_.

He doesn’t add _Because no one else will know how to walk the line and choose, moment by moment, whether to offer me empathy or call me out on my shit_.

He also doesn’t add _Because Riza is much, much harder to bribe_.

Ed’s making a face, but it’s not the sort that usually presages staunch refusal—closer to a combination of morbid fascination and instinctual distrust, not that Roy has been logging the nuances of Ed’s expressions. Surely that would be a sign of _boundary issues_ or whatever they’re calling it these days.

“You sure?” Ed asks. “I mean… I’m always available; I’ve got jackshit else to do, but… are you _sure_?”

“Positive,” Roy says.

“You got a play in mind?” Ed asks.

“I think they may frown upon us calling it a ‘play’,” Roy says. “They’re showing _Caretta_ at the opera house.”

Ed resumes staring at him as if he’s speaking in tongues. “You… want me… to go with you… to an _opera_?”

“It’s a good opera,” Roy says, which is absurd, because the statement is entirely subjective, and Ed’s criteria are…

“Does it have swords?” Ed asks.

Presumably, Ed’s criteria are like that.

“It didn’t the last time I saw it,” Roy says, “but it’s… possible that this performance will. I believe there’s a reference to some fighting in the second act, and some directors like to foreground those sorts of things to heighten the drama, and they really didn’t do justice to the climax in the last version that I saw, which—”

“Wait,” Ed says. “You _believe_? This—” His eyes widen comically. “Shit. Is this one of those ones that they do all in Cretan?”

“That’s how it was written,” Roy says. “Most people tend to feel it’s truer to the—”

“Do you speak any Cretan?” Ed asks.

“A handful of diplomatic pleasantries,” Roy says. “But opera’s not about the words; it’s about the emotions.”

Ed stares a little more.

“With all due respect to high culture and whatever,” Ed says, very deliberately, “that sounds like a crock of shit.”

Roy tries to swallow the laugh, but the tail end of it slips free of his attempts to strangle it in his esophagus, and it hijacks the edges of his breath. Ed hears it, of course, and smirks like he’s won.

But he still hasn’t said _no_.

So Roy lays out another card.

“The lobby of the opera house,” he says, “has an extremely well-stocked bar.”

Ed works his jaw. “Do I have to dress up?”

“A bit,” Roy says. “But not to the point of tails.”

Ed eyes him.

“I’ll get dinner,” Roy says.

Ed continues to eye him.

“The seats are quite comfortable,” Roy says. “You can have a drink and then take a very expensive three-hour nap.”

Slowly, Ed starts to grin.

“Now, _that_ ,” he says, “sounds like a Friday night.”

  


* * *

  


It does more than just sound like one: it arrives, in due time, and Roy finds himself standing in front of the mirror on his wardrobe door, agonizing silently about which waistcoat to wear.

The very prospect is absurd: Ed won’t even _notice_ the waistcoat, let alone care about how the particular shade of gray sets off Roy’s complexion. Roy suspects that Ed views people more or less as entities, and clothing is a necessary inconvenience that occasionally features enough black leather detailing or silver skull buttons to merit remarking upon. Anything less than gaudy ostentation most likely won’t even register.

Roy could try to convince himself that there’s someone else—some theoretical personage, swanning about in the ether, hypothetically due at the opera at eight thirty tonight—that he’s hoping to impress. And he does, on general principle, like to levy his own attractiveness whenever possible: he has the option, after all; and it gives him a modicum of power at any given moment. It would be foolish to pass it up when it’s such an easy way to gain the societal upper hand.

But there’s no point lying to the mirror, literally in this case. This is about Ed.

It shouldn’t be. He keeps reminding himself that there isn’t anything there—nothing hovering in the space between them; no current like lightning drawing their hands together so that the air will crackle when their fingertips touch. There is nothing, and there will continue to be nothing, and to daydream otherwise is masochistic at best and not unlikely to prove perilous. Jeopardizing his own dignity is one thing, but to put Ed in any sort of a compromising position—

He… had better not think of it in those precise words.

It’s fine. He looks fine—he is, objectively, aware of that; he doesn’t need his glasses to be able to determine that this combination of items still flatters him immensely—and he’ll be fine. He’ll be over this soon. It’s just that Ed’s in the wrong place at the wrong time, being the wrong type of person—being _here_ for him, even when he tries to pull away. He’s always been weak for that. He just can’t let Ed get sucked in.

That’s fine, too. The list of challenges that he’s up to is dwindling, but he can still take this one on. He knows he can.

He draws one last deep breath, straightens the knot of his tie, and turns his back on the mirror. He can do this. He doesn’t have much of a choice.

  


* * *

  


It really is unfortunate that Ed looks devastatingly good in black slacks and a black waistcoat and a dark red shirt. He has a coat over his arm. Ordinarily, Roy would prefer a look like that complete—finished, polished, balanced—but there’s no way in any of the hells he recognizes that it could make Ed look _better_ than he already does.

Roy shouldn’t even be thinking it, but Ed’s taking his sweet damn time sauntering down from the front of his apartment complex and over to the car, and Roy just can’t… help it. Can he blame the failure of his resolve on the ambient hurricane of greater stresses? Today wasn’t as bad as most of its predecessors this week, but it was a far cry yet from easy. He’s tired; and he’s tired of pretending not to be. The exhaustion has calcified around every bone in his body; it drags at every molecule; it hangs from his hair and his skin and his eyelids right up until the moment that he lies down in bed, and he has run out of reserves.

He is aware that those are excuses, but they’re the best ones he’s got left.

Ed must have obtained this waistcoat from some vengeful lesser deity hellbent on Roy’s destruction: it clings to the angles of his body like a possessive lover’s greedy hands, like the style itself was designed specifically to accent the breadth of his shoulders and the sharp lines of his sides. He looks like a weapon. He looks like the shadow in a wineglass made manifest; like sex incarnate and temptation personified—like the kindest and warmest and most deeply secret of Roy’s dreams brought to life. He looks like the gemstone in the pommel of a long-since-bloodied sword. He looks like the sort of sin you’d give up absolution for.

He hauls the door of the car open, drops into the passenger seat, and sighs loudly.

“You sure about this?” he asks. “We still got time to bail and do something more fun. Like pulling off our own fingernails.”

“Dinner’s on me,” Roy says.

Ed throws his unencumbered hand up in the air. “When are you gonna learn to _lead_ with that?”

Roy’s eyes will not linger on the fall of his hair; they will not memorize the way it slithers on the sleek fabric as he turns his head, tilts it, grins. Roy will not savor the composition of his face—pronouncedly more angular, now, than it was, but still with something nearly ethereal about the sharpness of his impossible ember-bright eyes; still with something almost delicate about the arch of his brows and the rise of his cheekbones and the mischief that rides the soft curve of his tantalizing mouth.

It’s a good damn thing that Roy doesn’t have his glasses.

It’s a good damn thing that they have somewhere to go.

Ed is off-limits. Ed is so far past them that the limits tell ghost stories of the time they once believed they’d see him, but they’re starting to forget.

Roy pins his gaze on the road and puts the car in gear.

“I am an extraordinarily slow learner,” he says.

“You’re an asshole,” Ed says, “is what you are.”

Roy envies the streetlamps that get to kiss Ed’s face in passing.

Shit.

“That, too,” he says

  


* * *

  


“I’m so sorry,” the maître’d says, almost managing to look more apologetic than aggravated. “We had an… incident… in the kitchens, and we’re a bit backlogged—it’s going to be at least an hour’s wait.”

Roy exchanges a glance with Ed. Should it be strange, too, that that’s so natural? They _are_ friends. They’re allowed to synchronize their thoughts a bit. That’s well within the purview of their current category of relationship.

Isn’t it?

“You already paid for the tickets, didn’t you?” Ed asks.

“Yes,” Roy says. Time was, he’s the sort of person who would do such a thing purely in the interests of preparedness. Time is now that he did it because he couldn’t risk giving himself an opportunity to back out.

There are far too many people in the foyer of this restaurant, presumably owing to the aforementioned snafu. There is also far too much glass in here; and the acoustics are miserable, and Roy’s temperature and the hairs on the back of his neck are both beginning to rise. He doesn’t want to be here. He’s hemmed in; it’s too loud; the clatter of silverware and the hubbub of ambient conversation and the peculiar flash of something like judgment in strangers’ eyes—

“We wouldn’t make the show,” Ed says, as if either of them doesn’t know it. “We can always come back here another time if you want.”

 _We_.

Roy has to stop this. If it gets any traction and gains any speed, it’ll send him careening off the cliff again, and he can’t—he just _can’t_ —

Not now. He doesn’t have it in him to do this again. Not ever, most likely. Not on top of the rest of it.

He has to kill this thing before it kills _him_.

“Of course,” he says, as smoothly as ever, and he turns to the maître’d and adds, “Thank you,” because that’s the civilized thing to do, and murderers should always conduct themselves like gentlemen in public. It’s the polite approach.

The instant that they’re outside, Ed grabs his elbow—with the metal fingers, and Roy sends up something like a prayer of gratitude to whatever there might be that bears resemblance to a higher power. He’s not sure he could take the warm ones right now.

“There’s a kebab stand two blocks from here,” Ed says, hauling on him, which at least helps to dispel some of the stupid notions of romance. “Their shit’s _killer_ , and it’ll take ten minutes to eat. Still on you, though.”

“That’s fair,” Roy says, and he manages, albeit narrowly, not to have to gasp for air.

  


* * *

  


Perhaps someday they’ll set his tribulations and his torments down in poetry. He supposes that no one should care—he doesn’t deserve the preservation; he’s no hero, and he shouldn’t be immortalized.

But there’s something rather stirring about having his life destroyed, close to instantaneously, by a fucking _waistcoat_.

Perhaps it wasn’t much of a life—not lately. Perhaps he ruined it, in every meaningful sense of the word, a long time ago. But there’s a scrap of poignancy in it, isn’t there? A wisp of pathos. He’s worked so hard to hold himself together, and this…

He shouldn’t be surprised. A part of him isn’t. A part of him knew that this was coming, and simply didn’t see fit to warn the rest of him. The prescient part apparently enjoys his suffering. It’s remarkable that he can be an asshole even to himself.

Ed has always been so much more than everyone else around him—so much _greater_ , if not precisely bigger. So unusual, and so outlandish, and so noble and so brilliant and so passionately compassionate. Roy has always been compelled by conflagrations—always drawn to danger, and to power, and to the beautiful things above him being held out of his reach.

“C’n you tell me the plot?” Ed asks through an enormous mouthful of kebab. “’T least then if I can’t sleep, maybe I’ll sort of be able to follow the damn thing.”

They’re sitting on the edge of the fountain in the square, bolting down kebabs and trying not to drip yogurt on their nice clothes, with the brisk air around them and a night of stuffy high art ahead. It’s delightful and ridiculous and bizarrely comforting, and there is something like happiness curdling in Roy’s chest.

He can’t let this happen. He _can’t_.

“It’s a love story,” he says. “As the vast majority of operas are. A young woman named Caretta, whose family is middling Cretan nobility, meets a young soldier at a party, and they fight like cats and then fall madly in love, and then he has to leave to go to war. She finds out that she’s pregnant and then that he’s died, and that’s intermission.”

Ed pushes his hair back from his forehead with his left hand. Fortunately he’s mostly been juggling the kebabs with the right.

“Sounds like a riot,” he says. “Then what?”

“It skips forward a bit,” Roy says. “And the first scene of the second half is from the soldier’s point of view, because of course he’s alive. He drags himself back to his long-lost love only to find that she’s married a suitor she had years ago, who was always infatuated with her but whose societal status was much lower than hers, to protect herself and her child. He’s decent but very cold, and he hates her son for obvious reasons. The instant the soldier returns, their romance rekindles, but Caretta keeps trying to do the right thing and stay out of it, which predictably doesn’t work in the slightest. All sorts of drama; the husband and the soldier get into a duel; at the last second, Caretta runs out into the middle of it and gets caught in the crossfire, and the soldier tries to shoot wide and hits her, whereas the husband doesn’t hesitate, so both Caretta and the soldier are mortally wounded. They die in each other’s arms, of course, and the husband is so moved by the power of their love and so devastated at losing Caretta that he offs himself, and then the curtain drops, and we have to assume that the child will need many years of therapy.”

Ed grimaces. “At least they bring the fake guns in at the end to make sure you’re awake. Still sounds like it’d benefit from swords, though.”

“There might be a suggestion box,” Roy says.

“As long as it’s better than the one you put in your office,” Ed says, “which had a hole in the bottom and was fixed up right over your trash can.”

Roy suppresses the smile. “Genius is never appreciated in its own time.”

“Pretty sure that wasn’t _quite_ what Lieutenant Hawkeye said when she tore it down,” Ed says, “but sure.”

“History will decide,” Roy says.

“History’s written by the type of people you’re trying to overthrow,” Ed says. He points at the last kebab lingering in the little tray between them. “You gonna eat that?”

“I don’t fancy my odds if I fight you for it,” Roy says. “Be my guest.”

“I swear,” Ed says, snatching the narrow stick up so deftly in the metal fingertips that Winry would likely punch the air. “You’re getting more sensible every single day.”

“Or you’re getting more convincing,” Roy says.

“Whatever it is,” Ed says, and Roy has to look intently off into the middle distance to resist the impulse to stare at his mouth, “I like it.”

Roy does, too. And if he says so—if he makes it even remotely clear how much—all of this will start to crumble, and the rubble will bury them both.

  


* * *

  


“Damn,” Ed says in an undertone, trying to look everywhere as they walk in. “This is… I’ve never been inside before.”

Roy tries to envision the way it would look for the first time—gleaming granite everywhere, shot with grays that make it warmer than the white marble of Central Command; frescoes on the walls and gilt detailing dripping from the walls and the doorways; the crimson velvet runner on the stairs and the opulent matching curtains between the lobby and the seating space.

All he can see is the people, and the vantage points, and the hundred-thousand angles of attack.

He regrets the kebabs. He does not regret the expenditure he made here the other night, when he stopped on his way home.

“They have to entice people inside to watch the swordless operas somehow,” he says, careful to keep his voice steady, as he leads the way through the milling crowd of well-dressed snobs towards the ticket window.

“Cool architecture can only go so far,” Ed says. “That’s like having a cake box with kale in it.”

“You mean your birthday present next year?” Roy asks.

He steps up to the window—even the register has twisting gold designs on the side; the middle-aged man behind it smiles with the caliber of overstated geniality that one comes to expect in an establishment of this type.

Roy can see himself reflected in the glass. None of the opera-goers behind them look, at least at first glance, like a threat. “We should have two in will call under Mustang, please.”

“Ah, yes,” the man says. “Very good.” His hands move nimbly—opening a metal box, dancing across its partitions, drawing out two slips of cardstock. Gold foil this time, sparking in the light. Roy keeps his own hands still at his sides by force: there is nothing _wrong_ here. At least not yet. It feels like there is; so often, outside, in public, with the noise bubbling around him and his heart hammering, it _feels_ like— “It’s number twelve. Have you joined us there before?”

“I have not,” Roy says, taking the tickets as they’re offered, “but I know where it is.”

“Wonderful,” the man says. He reaches under the counter, and he _must_ know something—must be someone, must have some motive—he _has_ to be going for a gun, and Roy’s stepping back, half-turning, trying to figure out where Ed ended up to push him clear; there’s no other possible— “Opera glasses for you, Mr. Mustang, sir. On the house.”

Roy freezes for half a breath, but he can’t afford it—no choice; no time; he relaxes his face, plasters on an easy smile, and holds his hand out to accept the two little black velvet bags being offered.

“That’s terribly kind,” he says. “Thank you.”

“Our pleasure,” the man says. “We appreciate your patronage. Please enjoy the show.”

Roy turns on his heel and starts for the stairs with his heart still drumming in his ears. It’s too loud here; it’s too much; this was a mistake—

Shit. Ed. Where—

“Hey.” The voice comes from close by his shoulder, and there’s a brush of contact against his elbow—he flinches, then cringes, but Ed doesn’t retreat at either one. “Are you okay? What happened?”

“Nothing,” Roy says, leading the way up significantly faster than the average sane and stable opera aficionado ever would. “I’m fine.”

“Okay,” Ed says in what Roy’s come to consider the Meaningless Concession voice—or perhaps the _Duly Noted; I’ll Grill You Later_ one. There’s some overlap. “When we get to our seats, do you wanna just give me some money? I think I’m gonna need that drink, but I can go get it myself.”

“You won’t need to,” Roy says. He holds the curtain at the head of the stairs, shepherding Ed through, and then guides him to the left and down the hall—past the portraiture of the founders, past a bowing usher, to the archway marked _Box Twelve_ in appropriately ornate lettering. “They bring the drinks to you when you sit up here.”

They’re at the very end of the row—the closest box to the stage on this side, far above the vast majority of the seats. Roy convinced one of the ushers to walk the premises with him the other night: he wouldn’t have pinned himself into a corner, despite the advantage of one fewer neighboring box, if it hadn’t been for the serendipitous presence of a set of emergency exit stairs at this end of the hall, immediately outside. If everything goes right, they have the best seats in the house; if something goes wrong, they have the best escape route. It would be tempting fate, of course, to deem it foolproof, but it would be a gross understatement to call it a relief.

“Holy _shit_ ,” Ed says as he steps through this set of curtains. “What the— _Mustang_ , what—are you serious? This is—we’re sitting _here_? How much did this _cost_?”

“A lot,” Roy says, drawing the drapes shut behind them. “But it’s rather unlikely that I’ll be able to trick you into going to the opera twice in your life, so I figured we should make a proper go of it.”

Ed looks at him for a long moment before looking down at the increasing size of the crowd shifting around a floor and a half below them.

“Hell,” he says. “It’s your money. You can blow it however you want. You think if I ask nice, they’ll bring me popcorn?”

Roy drops into one of the armchairs. It’s even more comfortable than it looked. This was… good. A good idea; a good choice; clever of him; constructive. “Worth a shot.”

  


* * *

  


Apparently, the Central City Opera House does not offer popcorn.

As consolation, however, they bring an entire box of chocolates and enough champagne to send Ed barreling straight through tipsy and directly on into drunk before the stage duel between Caretta’s lovers has even begun.

The group in the next booth over—which may be three generations of a family, if Roy’s subtle assessing glances can be believed—are engrossed in the pageantry unfolding on the stage, and even if they weren’t, it’s dim enough in here that he wagers that they wouldn’t recognize either him or Ed out of uniform and out of context.

Even if they have, though, people see what they want to, and what they think is likely: odds are favorable that they’d interpret the way that Ed has been leaning on Roy’s right shoulder for the last ten minutes as purely platonic. What other explanation could there possibly be for a thirty-three-year-old to bring his much-younger protégé to the opera, after all? The only people who prefer to assume a scandal are journalists, and Roy hasn’t attended an opera in so long that they couldn’t know to look for him here. From that off-kilter perspective, this is just about the safest place in Central for Ed to be making ambiguous, inebriated advances on Roy’s right arm.

“It’s sad,” Ed says, and at least he’s not too far gone to keep his voice down. Whether or not their box neighbors have kept to themselves so far, courting their attention is not on Roy’s to-do list. “The play, I mean. Opera. Show. Thing. Whatever. Because it’s… nobody’s fault. You know? I mean, probably people are about to start makin’ real stupid choices right about now, based on what you said, but—everybody was doing the best they could with the information that they had, and shit didn’t go so well, but it’s nobody’s _fault_. And now everybody’s gonna die and sing about it.”

“Both of those things are on the agenda,” Roy says. He will not focus on the warmth of Ed’s softer arm against him; he will not savor the way Ed’s cheek rests on his shoulder, and Ed’s hair trails down, sliding along the back of his shirt—

“Still,” Ed says. “I got a lot more out of the music than I figured I would. Guess maybe all you weirdos who pay through the nose to watch plays in a language you can’t understand might be on to something.”

“There had to be some reason that the medium has survived several centuries,” Roy says.

“My fuckoff dad survived several centuries,” Ed says. “That doesn’t impress me anymore.”

Roy is too aware—always; constantly; particularly now. Everything seems toweringly imminent: the radiating heat of Ed’s body pressed to his; the thickness of the velvet on the chair arm that his hand has clenched around; the drifting scent of the chocolates left behind after Ed’s eager sampling; the starched tightness of his collar under the knot of his tie; the rustle of the people in the next box; the soft rhythm of Ed’s breath; the poignant melody of the aria rising from the stage. There’s too _much_.

And he knows—he _knows_ —that finishing the second bottle of champagne, which survived Ed’s rampage, would file the edge off of all of it. He knows that he could dull his own senses enough to smother the panic if he drowned them all in ethanol. It’s worked a thousand times before.

But he can’t keep hobbling on that crutch—can’t keep giving in; can’t keep choosing the easiest egress, sliding first into numbness and thence into stupor to avoid addressing the pain. He has to be better than that, at least for tonight—he has to be stronger. The alcohol was for Ed, whom he’ll be driving home in less than an hour. He can push through this if he squares his shoulders and holds his breath.

But it would just be so _nice_ not to feel everything, simultaneously and so intense—it would be so wonderful, and so dizzyingly sweet, to distract his own brain with the chemical high; to let it suffuse him, to blur the world around himself into a kinder set of shapes.

Worse still: he can sense, now, that wrapping his arm around Ed’s shoulders would have a similar effect. There’s more than one type of intoxication.

Ed is acting more than friendly, which is, most likely, primarily the champagne talking—but he said himself, in so many words, that he’s capable of, if not universally prone to, attraction to men. Realistically, Roy knows that the scars on his hands and his heart don’t make him less appealing in any of the ways that matter at the start. He knows, too, that he’s a career manipulator with a knack for reading emotional cues, and that Ed is young and moderately insecure and deeply trusting. With the intervention of the champagne, he could have this _tonight_.

But he won’t. Ed’s been so damn generous; Ed’s been so open and so genuine, with nothing to gain. There are few enough things in the world, and in Roy’s life, that he’s done that he can qualify as right. Adding a wrongness of this magnitude—

The champagne is looking better by the second, but if he muddles his own judgment, the likelihood of waking up naked next to Ed—whether in his own bed or somewhere altogether more questionable would probably depend on the quantity imbibed—increases markedly. He can’t. He can’t afford it; he can’t afford any of it; and for once in his pathetic excuse for an existence, he has to take a stand against his own weakness. He can endure this. He can be strong enough—good enough. Just this once.

  


* * *

  


_Caretta_ concludes with a very long ensemble number, but not before the fake gunshots nearly make him startle out of his skin. As a result, he spends the duration of the final song with Ed’s hand flattened on _his_ back, which is disastrous for a multitude of reasons—including but not limited to the mere fact that Ed can read him so well; the fact that Ed already has the impulse to touch him when he’s agitated; and the fact that Ed will have been able to feel that the contact made Roy’s heart stumble faster, rather than calming him down.

Curtain call frees him before he succeeds in agonizing his way inside-out, although it’s a bit of a close call: Ed needs both hands for applauding, and Roy much prefers the torment of the thunderous noise of the whole theater clapping than the smaller, sharper, stinging torment of what another version of him might have been permitted to have.

By the time all of the actors have risen from the temporary-dead, taken their bows, and swept off-stage again, Roy’s hands hurt. He can only imagine how Ed’s left one must feel.

“Cool,” Ed says, apparently just as an overarching statement. “Can I keep the chocolate?”

At least he doesn’t seem to be planning to bring the champagne. Roy’s not sure he would make it out of the building without repossessing it and mainlining what’s left. “I don’t see why not.”

“ _Cool_ ,” Ed says. “So… you ready to go?” He stands, pauses, glances towards Box Eleven, glances down at the teeming mass of hoity-toity humanity moving below them, and then sits down again. “Or I could just finish the chocolate here.”

“You could,” Roy says, struggling to sound noncommittal.

Ed holds out the box, and his hand hardly sways at all. His grin doesn’t waver, either, although it does rather neatly skewer what remains of Roy’s distorted heart. “You want one?”

“Thank you,” Roy says, reaching for the closest specimen, because it sure as hell can’t hurt.

After a truffle, which is excellent, and a nougat, which is decent but slightly disappointing, the crowd has filtered away enough that Roy’s ache to leave so that they can sequester themselves indoors outweighs the risk of being pressed in among the strangers on every side. He stands, and Ed joins him, and Ed tucks the box of chocolates under his arm and then holds up the opera glasses.

“We get to hang on to these, too?” he asks.

They’re very nice pairs—sturdy bronze and foldable, with telescoping handles so that you can set whatever height you like.

“Given what I paid for these seats,” Roy says, “we should get to keep the furniture.”

Ed laughs, bright and warm and unmistakably honest, and the way that that throbs in the center of Roy’s chest will, he thinks, sustain him all the way home.

“Careful,” he says as they start down the stairs—red plush runner aside, he doesn’t imagine that polished granite and automail and moderate drunkenness mix very well. It’s a perfectly valid reason, isn’t it, to be setting his hand on Ed’s left shoulder—just to steady him; just to make sure he’s found his feet and keeps them underneath himself where they belong. Nothing suspect about that. Nothing ulterior; nothing—

“Ah!” a familiar voice says at the precise moment that they reach the foot of the stairs, moments after Roy has begun debating whether he can justify leaving his hand resting on Ed’s shoulder as he guides them through the crowd. It would be better than looking at the crowd, at least. And it’s far better than recognizing the voice and searching for the source. “General Mustang!”

“General Belmor,” Roy says, fixing on a genial smile. “What a pleasant surprise.”

One of those two things is true, and a half-truth is better than nothing at all.

“Quite, quite,” Belmor says, beaming. What a magnificent world it must be that other people live in, where they can mean the platitudes even once in a while. “I don’t believe you’ve met my lovely wife? Alana—General Roy Mustang.”

The hand she extends for him to graze his mouth against is swathed in a satin opera glove all the way up past the elbow. Alana Belmor, née Alyona Petrovich, does not betray a trace of an accent as she remarks, “Oh, yes—do you know, General, the papers don’t do you justice.”

Ed snorts so loudly that Roy almost chokes on his polite chuckle.

“Forgive me,” Roy says. “This is Major Edward Elric. You may be familiar with him from the papers, too.”

“Hi,” Ed says, and his grin might be convincing to the Belmors, since they don’t know him anywhere near as well as Roy does by now. “Sorry. He only brought me ’cause I’ve never, ever been before. I’m from a hick town way out east where if you started singin’ in Cretan about how in love you were, people’d think you’d really hit your head, so it’s a… it was… an experience. Um. S’nice to meet you.” He pauses, blinks, winces. “…sir?”

Roy wants, desperately, to pat his back as reassurance that this encounter is meaningless, and it’s fairly likely that the Belmors themselves have been drinking enough to forget any minor faux pas entirely by the time their taxi takes them home—but Belmor is observant, and much more interested in Roy than any impartial party ought to be.

“Delightful,” Belmor says, and it almost looks like he means that, too. Roy wonders if gravity will switch directions next, and they’ll all fall abruptly to the ceiling. “I do hope you enjoyed it?”

“Oh!” Alana says, laying a hand over her chest for good measure, as though she’ll be photographed to illustrate the emotion of surprise. “Edward Elric—you’re the Fullmetal Alchemist, isn’t that right?”

This grin is somewhat less convincing. “Uh… yeah. Um. Ma’am.”

“General,” Belmor says, deftly stepping between Roy and Ed, forcing them both to sidle backwards to make space, “let me borrow you for just a second—there was something you said the other day that I’ve been meaning to ask you about, but I’ll be darned if I’ve had the time to come by your office, so this is really just fateful, if you believe in that sort of thing—”

Roy has no choice but to let himself be marched away, abandoning Ed to Belmor’s wife with nothing but the sizable box of chocolates for a shield.

But it’s not that that makes his heart pound—and it’s not the thinning crowds, or the fact that Belmor leads them all the way to the end of the hall adjoining the restrooms, where there’s one wall adorned with a decorative fountain to hide the sounds of their voices.

It’s Belmor himself. It’s what he knows, or might know, or wants to.

Roy did as much digging as he could this week without incurring any suspicions. Belmor’s only nephew—his brother’s son—died in Aerugo, in a unit stationed in the next city over from the one where Kain served. That could make Belmor a pacifist intent on preventing similar tragedies over the duration of his lifetime… or it could invoke resentment of the Ishvalans for getting Aerugo embroiled in conflict with Amestris in the first place.

This is where the ice spreads very fragile, and the water beneath is cold enough to kill you on contact.

The upshot is that Roy’s extraordinarily glad now that he resisted the urge to drink.

Belmor stops, glances back to check that the whole hallway’s clear, and looks at Roy—more serious now than he’s ever looked in a meeting, with all of the joviality unceremoniously stripped away.

“The papers said three assassins came after you in Ishval,” Belmor says.

Roy is in a tunnel—no, a well. He’s at the bottom of a well, staring up at the sunlight; beams of it splinter on their way down to him, where he lies under six feet of water, striving to remember how to breathe.

“Were they patriots?” Belmor asks. “Was it revenge? Or did they seem—were they _too_ clearly coded as religious zealots out for vengeance? Like someone wanted it to be unmistakable that that was their motivation?”

Roy swallows. He can’t seem to feel his hands.

He wants to ask _What difference does it make?_

He wants to say _You have no idea what that is—“revenge”. You have no idea how infinitesimal that word is compared to what it means._

“Has someone come after you?” Roy asks instead. The questions are too pointed for it to be anything other than self-interest.

“No,” Belmor says, and the water ripples in the well, and the light casts prisms in a thousand colors through it. “My wife. She works at the Immigrations office—citizenship law, that sort of thing. She’s been advocating for the Ishvalans for years.”

Roy can almost taste the air.

And the bullets.

And the ash.

“Ah,” he says.

A puzzle piece that he’d been turning over and over in his fingertips slots into place—the other generals had used to joke, fairly often, that marriage had made Belmor soft, until some other officer’s personal foibles drew their vague interest, and they moved on. Belmor’s voting records confirm the truth of the ribbing, though, in a manner of speaking: he was much more opinionated before he married Alana eight years ago. He remained opinionated for a few months after the fact—but then, gradually, he gave up taking a stand on just about anything.

If someone had threatened her, back then, with the intention of dissuading him from holding a position that they didn’t like, it wouldn’t have been so great a sacrifice for him to stop speaking out altogether in the interests of keeping her safe. He’d already established himself by that point; the promotion wheel had turned enough times that he was a shoe-in for Major General whether he shouted at the others across the boardroom table or not. It would have been easier on his conscience to hold his tongue from that day forward and shield her from the spotlight with his silence.

He’d played it at just the right pace, too: so incremental that everyone assumed that it was just middle age mellowing his old passions, and it didn’t hold their attention or garner more than a handful of occasional idle jokes. A few digs at his bygone manhood wouldn’t have been much of a price to pay for the knowledge that their rifle sights wouldn’t fix crosshairs on Alana anymore.

Is that it? Roy gambles regularly on the unseen complexity of other people; he can’t be sure. But by the way Belmor looked at her, and the progress of the records, Roy’s money is on love. That simple, for once.

Then again—

It could be a long game—one of the longest played in Amestrian politics, at this rate, but no one pretends to be harmless for fun, and no one’s ever what they seem.

Caution costs Roy nothing. Trust could cost him everything he’s made, and all of the people who contributed.

“What happened?” Roy asks. “ _Exactly_ what happened?”

“I wasn’t there,” Belmor says, “but the Immigrations building is two miles from Central Command, to the north.” Is he contextualizing because he doesn’t think that Roy knows the lay of the land well enough to remember, or because he thinks that Roy _does_ , and wants to seed the story with a subtle reminder that it’s a relatively poor and relatively dangerous sector of the city, populated in large part by non-native citizens? “She said she was leaving late the other night, and as she was walking to her car—” It’s not relevant to the story to ask, in moderate incredulity, how many cars the Belmors own between them; Roy will have to refrain. “—she thought that someone was following her. She went into a bookshop and browsed for a few minutes, and then she left out the back door and circled back to the street another block down. She was fairly sure they were still there—still tailing her—so she stopped in front of a dress shop window to pretend to look at the products so that she could check the reflection for whoever was behind her. She said he was huge—very tall, well over six feet, broad-shouldered, with a tattoo on his face that she drew for me afterwards. It’s an Ishvalan word or symbol or something, as far as I can tell. She made eye contact with him, and she said that she couldn’t tell if his eyes were red or not in the dark, but that scared her enough that she ducked inside the shop and begged the cashier to let her use the phone. She called me, and I came to pick her up, and by then there wasn’t anyone, but—”

“But that’s more than enough to merit worrying about,” Roy says. “The symbol, on the tattoo—”

“I’ll have someone bring you a copy of how she sketched it for me,” Belmor says. He sighs, pushing a hand back through his hair, and pulls a face. “Cheerful conversation for a nice Friday night at the opera, eh?”

“I’m not sure ‘cheerful’ is the word I would have chosen,” Roy says, “but necessary nonetheless.”

“Always the diplomat,” Belmor says, smiling ruefully. “I like to imagine that it’s all just natural to you, and you come out with beautifully-phrased compromises when you’re talking in your sleep.”

“No comment,” Roy says.

Belmor’s smile thins, then quirks at the corners. “That’s what I thought.” He sobers again, instantly—this man is three times smarter than any of the generals have recognized for years. “What about you? What happened to you in Ishval, I mean. Any connections?”

Roy swallows. He attempts at a neutral expression. “There… wasn’t much time to interrogate them. I know that one of them was an Ishvalan citizen with a grievance. The others…”

Belmor is watching him much too closely. “I imagine it… all happened very fast.”

“Yes,” Roy says. “And adrenaline has a way of blurring the details, sometimes, instead of sharpening them.”

He’s not sure if Belmor will believe that, and he’s even less sure that he cares one way or another.

“I don’t suppose that the police up there have given you any updates,” Belmor says, which doesn’t give Roy much to go on in either regard. “But if they do…”

“You’ll be the first to know,” Roy says.

Belmor probably doesn’t believe that, either, and Roy _definitely_ doesn’t care.

Indifference is… strange, now, when it creeps through him, and his veins fill up with lead. He’s so used to feeling things—acutely, albeit nowhere near as explosively as someone like Ed. He’s used to tamping down those feelings so that no one else will see the sparks. It is distantly bizarre to reach out on instinct to smother the embers and find that the hearth is cold.

“Wonderful,” Belmor says. “I was really hoping I could count on you, Mustang. It’s a relief to know that I was right.”

“I can’t promise any miracles,” Roy says, struggling to pass off the weariness as some sort of dogged resolve, “but I’ll do what I can.”

Belmor claps his shoulder warmly and leads the way back towards the foyer.

The lobby has mostly cleared out, except for the pair of blonds sitting on the bottom step of the staircase talking animatedly and sizing up the last few chocolates in the box.

“Well,” Belmor says, offering Alana a hand to help her to her feet as Ed flushes slightly and tries to pack the chocolates away. “I’d ask if you had a nice time, but I think I can guess at the answer.”

“Edward is so much more interesting than anyone else of the military I have ever met,” Alana says—utterly unapologetically at that. “I think they should train more like him.”

“Anyone who tried to train Ed,” Roy says, “got what was coming to them.”

The smirk that Ed unleashes on him really ought to qualify as a fourth assassination attempt. “That almost sounds like a compliment, comin’ from you.”

“My mistake,” Roy says.

Ed sticks his tongue out, so that makes five.

  


* * *

  


Ed spends most of the car ride back to Roy’s house humming softly. It’s not songs from _Caretta_ —nothing Roy recognizes at all. He didn’t take Ed for the sort of genius who composes on the fly, but he supposes that he could be wrong about that; he’s made the mistake of underestimating Ed’s capabilities once or twice before.

Tonight, he makes the mistake of underestimating Ed’s champagne-liberated enthusiasm.

Ed trails him as he starts the circuit of the house to check the locks. “So… what do you wanna do?”

“It’s nearly midnight,” Roy says.

“I know,” Ed says, matter-of-factly, which is really rather funny given how difficult it usually is to keep track of time through the haze of intoxication that he must be experiencing right now. “But my brain’s set to ‘fun’ after all that shit. You wanna play chess?”

The living room window is securely latched. “You hated chess.”

“I liked that you liked it,” Ed says.

Roy looks at him. He beams.

Roy suspects that this high may be followed by a crash, motivated by a force equal and opposite to the one that propelled them up here.

“Come on upstairs,” he says. “Let’s see how you feel in a few more minutes.”

“Don’t you use the coax-y voice on me,” Ed says, but he’s following anyway. “Save that shit for generals and children. And anybody who’s both.”

“I think you’re the closest that the Amestrian military has ever come to that,” Roy says. He doesn’t imagine that a drunk Ed will begrudge him for changing the subject without a segue in sight: “It seemed like you enjoyed talking to Mrs. Belmor.”

“Yeah!” Ed says. “She’s real nice. She said her parents first moved down here ’cause they got sick and tired of the cold, so they went south, y’know. She lived in a little city pretty close to Dublith, so she’d been there a bunch of times, so we were talkin’ about that for a while. She’s all right.” They’ve topped the stairs; Ed reaches out, and Roy’s too startled to dodge—the automail fingers curl into the front of his waistcoat, fixing him in place. Ed’s eyes look almost luminous in the dim light of the hallway, and Roy has to resist the urge to haul his way free. “What’d _you_ talk about?”

“Extraordinarily boring matters of state,” Roy says.

“Bullshit,” Ed says—but cheerfully. Perhaps Roy should get him sloshed more often. He loosens his grip, and Roy steps back, managing to make the transition to holding the bedroom door for him look deliberate, rather than like a salvaged retreat. “Whatever. Hey, so what do you want to do?”

“Sleep,” Roy says.

Ed rolls his eyes, reaching for the buttons on his own thrice-damned waistcoat, and Roy turns away—better not to see any of it; better not to feed the indestructible stupid fantasies with concrete images; better to hazard, but not to _know_.

“Fine,” Ed says. “What do you want to do tomorrow?”

Roy pretends to pause and consider.

“Sleep,” he says.

“Next time,” Ed says, “I’m makin’ the Friday night plans. And they’re not gonna involve sleeping.”

“Or opera?” Roy asks.

“Probably not,” Ed says. “But mostly ’cause I can’t afford it.”

Roy glances at him swiftly to make sure it’s safe—the waistcoat has vanished, presumably onto the floor somewhere, but Ed’s shirt remains unshed, so for the moment, the coast is clear.

“Sit tight,” Roy says. “I’m going to get you s—”

“I’ve never understood how the fuck I was supposed to do that,” Ed says, though he tosses himself down onto the foot of the bed anyway, and his hair bounces, and he stretches out on his back, and oh… no. “There’s a hell of a lot of ways you can sit, but ‘tight’ isn’t a descriptor that comes to mind, y’know?”

“On behalf of idioms everywhere,” Roy says, moving into the bathroom, “I apologize for offending your logical sensibilities.”

Ed rolls over, the better to offer a retort partly muffled by the mattress: “Figures’f speech can’t apologize.”

“Exactly,” Roy says. “That’s why I did it for them.” He fills the nighttime-thirst-contingency glass from the tap and brings it back over to the bed. “Drink this.”

Ed wriggles fruitlessly in a way that does not dispel any of Roy’s impure thoughts and then turns his head enough to crack open one eye.

“I didn’t have _that_ much,” he says. “I’m not gonna be hungover.”

“Of course you didn’t,” Roy says. “And of course you won’t.” He holds the glass out. “Just humor me.”

“Don’t say that,” Ed says, wrenching himself upright. He grabs the glass, narrowly avoids sluicing water all over himself, raises it to his mouth, throws his head back, and chugs it so fast that Roy only has a few moments to fear that he’ll choke before the water’s gone. The glass lowers, and Ed shakes his head and then scowls, offering it back. “Humorin’ somebody’s what you do when you don’t really like them. Or when you think their idea’s stupid, but you don’t want to pick a fight. Or—whatever. Point is, I’m not gonna humor you. Ever. ’Cause that’s bullshit. If you want me to do something, if it’s not stupid, I will; and if it is, I’ll tell you. Okay?”

Roy takes the glass and utters the only reasonable answer, regardless of how his head may be reeling: “Okay.”

“Good,” Ed says. “Glad we sorted that out.”

He drops onto his back on the bed again, dragging his left arm back and forth like he’s trying to make an extremely misguided, rather lopsided snow angel.

Roy returns the glass to its safer residence on the bathroom counter before circling back to Ed. “Are you… all right?”

“What does it look like?” Ed asks.

“I’m really not sure,” Roy says.

“I’m dandy,” Ed says. “And fine.”

Roy can’t argue with the second, which is… a problem.

“That was going to be my first guess,” he says. “Come brush your teeth.”

Ed lays his arm over his face instead of swinging it back and forth across the sheets. “I don’t wanna.”

“While that’s understandable,” Roy says, “if you get a cavity while you’re here, your brother is going to kill us both.”

Ed peeks from under his elbow. “Good point.” He heaves himself up again, sighing loudly as he does, which is something of a feat. “All right, let’s make this quick. And hygienic. And if I dribble all over my shirt ’cause my coordination’s fucked, you’re not gonna tell anyone.”

“My lips are sealed,” Roy says.

It turns out that it’s a good thing, too, because Ed apparently forgets that he’s brushing his teeth halfway through the process, attempts to start another conversation, and manages to drool foam all over the front of his nice red shirt.

He stares down at himself for a long second, then stares at himself in the mirror, then turns to Roy and points his toothbrush accusingly.

“Not a _word_ ,” he says.

“Secret’s safe with me,” Roy says.

Ed eyes him mistrustfully, which Roy supposes is fair.

“I mean it,” Roy says. “And even if you don’t believe me, consider it from the logical perspective—I can’t _afford_ to sell you out. You know far too much about me now that I don’t want anyone else to know. In no universe would a small, toothpaste-related laugh at your expense be worth the risk of you exposing all of my…”

What? Failures? Turmoil? Quite a lot of each.

He waves his hand in what he hopes looks like a general sort of way. “All of… this.”

Ed blinks owlishly at him. “All of your bathroom?” Roy blinks back, and then Ed smirks. “Kidding.” He glances down at himself again and grimaces. “I… can you…”

“Help?” Roy asks.

The face Ed makes answers that question, and every other one he could have asked.

  


* * *

  


Ed is too adorable altogether in one of Roy’s old T-shirts. It actually fits him in the shoulders better than Roy would have expected—which is, unfortunately, a turn-on; but is also, fortunately, one that Roy can pointedly ignore intently enough that it doesn’t distract him too much—but it drapes off of his frame everywhere else. When Roy returns from scrubbing a bit of the toothpaste out of the dress shirt and hanging it in the shower to dry, Ed has curled up on the foot of the bed again, bearing more than a passing resemblance to a satisfied cat.

“You can’t sleep there,” Roy says.

“You’re not the boss of me,” Ed says, which is, as Roy remembers daily, nightly, and during several minutes of every hour, true. “Why not?”

“It’s improper,” Roy says. “Which doesn’t make a whit of difference—don’t give me that look—but won’t you get cold?”

Ed snuggles down against the comforter, closing his eyes. “Spite’ll keep me warm.”

“Blankets tend to be a bit more consistent,” Roy says. “Are you still sufficiently spiteful in your sleep to maintain your core temperature? You’d have to sustain a rather high spite coefficient to counteract your body’s natural cooling, wouldn’t you?”

Ed… shivers, for reasons that elude Roy’s understanding—he’s about to ask when Ed cracks an eye open again and starts patting at the space on the comforter beside his head. “Don’t care. S’more comfortable. Try it.”

Roy would hazard a guess that the only force more powerful than Ed’s stubbornness when sober is the version magnified by being drunk.

He sits.

“Feels the same to me,” he says.

“That’s ’cause you’re an idiot,” Ed says, so fondly that Roy almost startles.

That’s his mistake.

The momentary hesitation gives Ed enough time to shift, half-prop himself up on his right elbow, and then lay his beautiful head squarely on Roy’s thigh.

“ _Way_ more comfortable,” he says.

This is—

Impossible? Evidently not. Ed has always crushed impossible up in his hand like fresh bread, popped it into his mouth, and eaten it for breakfast before it had a chance to cool.

Roy is at something of a loss. If he moves—if he acts in any way whatsoever—he’s condoning this, possibly even encouraging more. Ed doesn’t understand what he’s dipping his toes into. It’s not fair to him to grasp him by the collar and drag him into the deep end when the shallows aren’t so cold.

How much of this will Ed even remember tomorrow morning? That’s a game that no smart gambler would deign to play. Perhaps if Roy just stays very still, this will… resolve itself. Somehow. Perhaps he can escape unscathed—perhaps he won’t be implicated for wrongdoings if he simply doesn’t do _anything_.

Inaction and grudging acceptance have worked so damn well for him before, after all.

He swallows, weighs his options—he can suggest, very neutrally, that they’d better get some sleep; the instant Ed moves enough, he’ll slip out from underneath, and—

“It just got me thinking,” Ed says. He scowls. He looks younger with his hair sliding back off of his face like this. “I hate that sometimes—just—how easy it is to start down these tunnels, y’know, in your head—”

“I know,” Roy says softly.

“But talkin’ to Alana,” Ed says. “About the south, and stuff, and the heat… it just… got me thinking about Rush Valley. And that got me thinking about Winry. And that got me thinking about how—I mean—what if I’d just… tried harder? Y’know? What if I’d—rest of my life, I’ve never met a challenge I couldn’t crack just by beatin’ my head against it long enough, but I—I mean—did I let it go too easy? I shouldn’t’ve. It’s not the same anymore. She still… we still talk, and all, but it—it’s not… I can feel it’s different. It’s all different.”

“There’s no ‘trying harder’ about it,” Roy says, “because there’s nothing that needs to be changed.”

Ed wrinkles his nose. “Yeah, but—”

“No,” Roy says. “You are who you are. You can change habits, and behaviors, but the fundamentals are fixed. And that’s _fine_. You’ve paid your dues, Ed. You don’t owe your life to anyone. It’s yours now.”

“That’s part of the fuckin’ problem,” Ed says. “When I got done—you know, with Al, with all of it, when it was _over_ —I told myself I just… wasn’t gonna hurt people anymore. Not ever. No matter what it took. But it still…” He presses both hands to his face, one tremulous, one gleaming, and Roy’s heart twists. “There’s nothing you can do. It just—just being alive, being a person, you’re gonna let people down. And it’s hard, Roy. It is so fucking _hard_ some days; I don’t…”

“Is that why you took me on as a new project?” Roy asks, and he meant for it to lighten the mood, but the instant it’s out of his mouth— “If I was already at rock bottom, you couldn’t possibly do any more damage in the process of trying to help?”

Ed moves both hands aside and blinks up at him for a long second.

Then Ed starts to laugh—loud and bright and ever-so-slightly bitter, from the center of his body.

“ _Idiot_ ,” he says.

Roy’s not sure whether that’s a confirmatory ‘Idiot’ or a rebuking one, and somehow, tonight, he’s not quite brave enough to ask.

“What a heinous—and tragically familiar—accusation,” he says instead.

“Someone’s gotta keep you in your place,” Ed says. “Or at least remind you what it is on a semi-regular basis so that your head doesn’t get too big to fit through standard doorways. Can you imagine how much it’d take out of taxpayer funds if they had to remodel every single fuckin’ door in Central Command?”

“How immensely fortunate that I have you in my life,” Roy says.

That wasn’t meant to sound nearly so damn honest either.

“Yeah,” Ed says, closing his eyes again, and a hint of a smile plays around his mouth. “Was easier when I was still in your office all the time, but this whole roommate-thing is good, too. Convenient and all.”

Roy knows it’s taking advantage. He knows it’s wrong, if such a thing exists; if the concept still has any meaning; if he’s any sort of judge.

But this might be his only chance to get a truthful answer, and Ed might just understand refusing to let that opportunity slip away, even if grasping it requires questionable means.

…no, he wouldn’t. This is Ed. Ed would never— _could_ never—understand doing a bad thing for his own benefit.

But maybe he’ll forgive it anyway.

Roy tries to still his trembling right hand as he reaches out and strokes back the indescribably beautiful gold hair, letting it tangle around his fingers, letting it pool across his lap. God— _God_. It’s better than he guessed; better than he imagined; better than he dared to think about in the far-too-numerous moments of frailty. It’s delicious. It’s transcendent. He is a worse man now than he was two hours ago. Is it worth it, just this once, if he gets the truth?

He waits until Ed’s eyelids are fluttering at his cautious ministrations before he says, “Why did you request reassignment to another command?”

The soft laugh throws him. Ed opens his eyes again: two slivers of liquid gold ore try to pin their focus on Roy’s face.

“Game changed,” Ed says. “I’m bad at keepin’ my mouth shut, tend to be destructive, crap at politics… all the shit that used to make me an asset was making me a liability instead. I was just gonna get in your way. Over in Investigations—it’s nice. It’s fine, I mean. It’s not bad. I like bein’ with Lieutenant-Colonel Ross a lot, and she helps me look out for my weak spots. I figure this way I can try to get better at some of the stuff I’m bad at, but I won’t jeopardize what you’ve got to do while I’m working on it. And maybe if the game changes again sometime, I’ll be ready for it, and I’ll be what you need.”

Roy listens to his heart beat once, twice, three times. This can’t—this can’t possibly—

“You did this for _me_?” he says.

“You put a lot more than that on the line for us when it counted,” Ed says, calmly, as though this is ordinary, as though young men hurling themselves into careers they despise for the sake of a debt is _unremarkable_. “And it’s not all noble and shit, anyway. Partly every time I look at you, I get stupid, and I finally got tired of it.”

Roy feels very much like he has pulled loose from the fabric of reality—like he is rippling through the void, spinning in the ether, utterly unmoored.

“What?” he says.

“You know fuckin’ _what_ , asshole,” Ed says. “I grew up, you started treating me like a person instead of a kid-shaped liability, and we had real conversations, and you smiled a lot more, and my brain just started goin’ to mush any time you looked at me… I mean, shit. I didn’t have much of a _choice_.”

It is almost implausible that Roy should receive such a fitting punishment—that he should replay his greatest failures over and over for the rest of this lifetime, in progressively smaller scales. Yet again he has caused precisely what he set out to prevent. It’s poetry, of a sort.

“You noticed,” Ed says, smirking up at him. “Don’t give me that. You notice _everything_. Or are there just so many people fallin’ all over themselves for you that you can’t keep track anymore? You gotta block it out these days so that there’s room for other stuff in your head?”

“I thought you’d just… warmed up to me,” Roy says—the words slip out before he can disentangle his hand from Ed’s hair and hold it over his own mouth to stop them. “In a general way. Mutual respect.”

“Guess that’s true, too,” Ed says. “Respect _and_ a lotta time spent thinkin’ about you naked.”

The construction of that sentence makes it difficult to tell which of them was actually or theoretically naked during the thinking in question. It’s a minor mystery of language that Roy is simply going to have to live with.

His tongue feels extraordinarily thick and leaden in his mouth as he says, “Somehow I missed the latter part.”

“Probably ’cause you were busy shoving words like ‘latter’ into perfectly normal sentences that never did anything to you,” Ed says, oddly contentedly, and closes his eyes again. “I’d say we ought to set up a criminal linguistics department in the police or something, but you’d get arrested on day one, and then you’d never get to run this stupid place.”

“Could we make a special prison dedicated to linguistic criminals?” Roy asks. “I imagine I’d have the place to myself.”

“Guess you could run that instead,” Ed says.

Ed goes quiet for a few long seconds, face relaxing into unreadability, and Roy dares to think that perhaps this is over—perhaps they can toddle along to bed now, and Ed won’t remember much of any of it in the morning, and Roy can just marinate silently in the guilt of it on his own time. He has to think of something clever to say, ideally something so scintillatingly witty—or so over-the-top pretentious; that may be more his style—that it will distract Ed while Roy extricates his hand from the flood of beautiful hair strewn across his lap.

Ed opens his eyes, but he’s looking at the ceiling, not at Roy.

“You… really didn’t see it?” he asks. “Didn’t—suspect, even? Didn’t—I dunno. Wake up one morning and even just… wonder?”

Roy has no idea what answer Ed’s looking for—which version of the truth might hurt him the least.

He doesn’t think it’s _It never occurred to me as a possibility when you are so much better a man than I am_ is a winner, even if it’s the truest of them all.

“You’ve always been very generous with your affections,” he says. “I thought… perhaps I’d just earned my way up to a slightly higher echelon.”

Likely there were signs, possibly even some of a size and caliber that he couldn’t have overlooked if it had been anyone else. But he’d assumed so many things, with Ed—that he’d be the meddlesome bastard colonel forever; that any flash of the tension that had sometimes sparked between them had been drowned in the joined rivers of time and maturity; that Ed had already promised all the adulation in him to Winry Rockbell, and that it was and would be a good thing for both of them. For all of them. That the less he looked at Ed with anything but pure intentions, the better.

“Huh,” Ed says. “I sort of… I mean, I figured you knew. Acted on that. ’Cause I thought—y’know. If I was givin’ you those signals, but your reaction hadn’t changed, obviously you weren’t receptive. Maybe because you weren’t into guys, or just because you weren’t into me, or—whatever. But I figured it had to mean you weren’t interested.”

Roy breathes in, slowly, and out again. He can still defuse this. There’s still time t—

“Are you?” Ed asks. “Interested.” He licks his lips; his eyes flick over Roy’s face— “I’m not gonna be upset or something if you’re not.”

“I think,” Roy says, as levelly as he can with his heart rebounding in his chest, “that we should go to bed.”

Ed’s eyelids sink halfway to closed, and the smile curls only the right corner of his mouth.

“Okay,” he says.

He shifts, rolling onto his side to put his arm beneath himself—and surely it’s an unanticipated side-effect that his hair drags over Roy’s thighs, smooth and heavy and silken and gleaming avidly in the low light.

It can’t be on purpose.

It _can’t_.

Ed slides to the edge of the bed, stands, stretches both arms high above his head, arches his back—

Roy won’t touch him. Not now, not like this—not with Ed still giddy from the champagne; not when they’re both wracked by a moment of nostalgia and the circling vultures of the _maybe_ s and the _might have_ s and the _what if_ s. Tomorrow morning will be an entirely different world from tonight; tomorrow they’ll both be rational again. Tomorrow Ed will remember why it’s so damn lucky that Roy never gave back any of what he was apparently offering. Tomorrow Roy will scrounge up the strength to keep him at arm’s length again. He’s safer there. They both know it. Deep down, they both know.

Dignity be damned and long-since lost, Roy crawls over to his side of the bed and fights his way under the covers. He feigns great fascination with the process of fluffing his pillow while Ed sheds his slacks— _shimmies_ out of them; he must know; he can’t possibly not—and climbs into bed on the other side.

Roy built this hell for himself one sulfur-bleeding brick at a time and then strolled in through the flaming archway and made himself at home. This is his own damn fault.

“G’night, Roy,” Ed says.

Roy stretches up to turn out the light, which gives him a blessed but brief moment to spend silencing all of the other thoughts.

“Goodnight, Ed,” he says, and it almost sounds ordinary.

  


* * *

  


When he wakes, the bed beside him is empty—sheets pushed back, crumpled up and curling like a wave about to break.

Evidently Ed remembered enough of the conversation from last night to have made a decision. Roy doesn’t blame him. It’s what Roy wanted, really, in the long run, for both of them. He should be relieved. He should be delighted.

He sits up, slowly, feeling every last wasted minute of his lifetime weighing on his bones, and pushes his hair back from his face. One more day. Does he have one more in him, if he has to trudge the hours alone?

A clatter from downstairs, followed by a characteristic “ _Shit_!”, changes the premise of his argument by force before he can explore it.

He breathes deeply, slides out of the bed, pushes his feet into his house slippers, reaches for his robe, discovers that it’s missing, and stands. The dresser yields up an old sweatshirt after a few moments’ rummaging, and then he’s feeling insulated enough to chance the stairs and what lies at the bottom of them.

“Hey,” Ed says around the fingertip he’s sucking on, which is far too much and far too early. Roy considers turning around and going directly back to bed without a word, but Ed’s making omelettes, and the gesture alone would be moving even if they didn’t smell so nice. “Had to pee and figured I might as well get up.”

“And steal my belongings, apparently,” Roy says, gesturing to the heretofore missing bathrobe that Ed has repossessed.

“Borrow,” Ed says. He reaches into the pocket with his automail hand and raises a bit of familiar white fabric marked out with red. “You keep a spare set of gloves in every single piece of clothes you’ve got these days?”

“As an Amestrian citizen,” Roy says, “I have a fundamental right to abstain from testimony that could cause me to incriminate myself.”

Ed blinks at him.

Roy blinks back.

“Such as,” Roy says, “answering that question in that way, and incriminating myself regardless. Is there coffee on yet?”

“Just finished,” Ed says. “Save me a sip if you can spare one.”

“I try not to make promises that I know I can’t keep,” Roy says.

Ed rolls his eyes, but at least he’s shoved the gloves back into their berth again, and coffee has a rather ironic tendency to settle Roy’s nerves.

In Ishval, it was an advantage that he stopped noticing the taste of things when the brutality smothered the rest of him. Sensations registered progressively less as the days wore on, as though the wind and the storms of sand and the scrubbing at the ash on his skin were all gradually grinding him away. Taste went first, as far as he remembers. There wasn’t much out there worth eating, let alone appreciating being able to eat, and at the time he found it distantly sort of curious. He’d meant to ask Maes if he’d experienced it too. He could still ask Riza. But he’s relatively sure that he doesn’t want to know.

This morning, he manages to focus enough to identify some of the flavors of what Ed’s made for him. A few of the sips of the coffee make it through. He has to be careful—has to play it safe; has to prioritize; has to pick his battles, so to speak. If he forces himself to feel, he will feel _everything_ , and he doesn’t suppose that he’ll make it out of that in much of any shape.

“So today,” Ed says as Roy sections off little pieces of his omelette and redistributes them to various sectors of his plate, “I’m thinking we should take a walk to the library.”

Roy glances at him. Ed doesn’t look particularly hungover, but for one thing, Roy’s not wearing his glasses; and for another, the late teens and early twenties are _far_ more forgiving of alcohol-related indiscretions than any of the years that follow.

“Why?” Roy asks.

“Because you need a walk,” Ed says, “and I need a book.”

“Would you like to make the military dog joke?” Roy asks. “Or shall I?”

Ed sits back in his chair, waving his left hand and the fork still held in it. “Bark bark, something about a leash, new tricks, dinner’s gonna be kibble. How’s that?”

“Succinct,” Roy says. “Which book?”

“One of the rarer Paracelsus ones,” Ed says, gesturing aimlessly with the fork like some sort of culinary conductor. “They’ve got a really nice copy, but they only let you take it out short-term, so I’ve been waiting for a time when I can get it and then read it all at once.”

“I wasn’t aware that you ever treated books any other way,” Roy says.

“It’s what I _like_ doing,” Ed says. “’Cause you get a much better sense of the content when you absorb the whole thing in one sitting. But it’s harder when you have your whole day chopped up into chunks where you have to do regular desk-style work and stuff.”

Roy doesn’t want to go outside—he doesn’t even want to get up. He doesn’t want to see the sun; he doesn’t want to move, let alone travel, let alone field all of the stimuli presented by a trek all the way to the library, past dozens upon dozens of chattering people and endless streams of sputtering cars.

But if he doesn’t go, Ed will drag him. Possibly on a literal leash.

And there’s a part of him that wants Ed to be… pleased with him, even if ‘proud of him’ may be a thousand miles out of the question.

Not to mention inappropriate, which occurs to him as a second thought. But there’s something about the balance of it that just isn’t right.

He’s supposed to be in that position. He’s supposed to be the protector—elder and wiser and stronger in the ways that really count.

He isn’t, anymore. But Ed’s the only one who knows how deep it runs.

He pushes his chair back from the table and stands, reaching out to catch Ed’s empty plate and lay it atop his much-less-empty one. “When do they open?”

  


* * *

  


Once they’ve waded through the misery that is weekend mornings in a city when one’s nerves won’t let up rattling like loosened shutters in a gale, Roy discovers two things at the library: firstly, that Ed knows precisely where to find Paracelsus’s medical texts even in a building of such intimidating size; secondly, that Ed is either entirely indifferent to female attention or even more oblivious than Roy ever realized. The girl at the front desk is staggeringly beautiful and frighteningly intent on flirting aggressively with both of them, but Ed doesn’t even seem to _see_ her. Roy has known him to be single-minded, certainly, but this is a significant step up from getting lost in thought and needing to be summoned back to reality with a shake of the shoulder or a hand waved in front of his face.

“She is… remarkably pretty,” Roy says, keeping his voice low, as he trails Ed towards the aisle where their prize awaits.

“Yeah,” Ed says. “That’s the one that likes me. Her favorite flowers are hydrangeas. Purple. You could take _her_ to the opera.”

“I don’t want to,” Roy says, and it’s out of his mouth before he can stop it, although he nearly chokes on his own tongue trying to call it back.

Ed halts in front of a shelf and favors Roy with a raised eyebrow before starting to run his clever left hand’s fingers along the spines.

“I mean,” Roy says, sounding far less desperate than he feels, “I wouldn’t imagine that she’d find a way to get us free chocolates, and then what’s the point?”

“Yeah,” Ed says calmly. “Most of the opera buffs I know are really just in it for the candy. Oh, _hell_ yes. Gotcha.” He plucks a book off the shelf, turns on his right heel, and immediately takes off striding towards the front desk again. “C’mon, we’re burning daylight.”

There are worse things to burn, of course, but Roy swallows the observation, and it stings all the way down.

He leaves his part-time roommate unattended in the study at home for a grand total of eight minutes—the collar on his shirt feels too tight against his throat, and the decision of which paperwork to begin with takes another few moments after that, and then he has to find a pen, and then a clipboard—and returns to find Ed contort-sprawled in one of the chairs, leg kicked up over the arm, curled up with a stack of notes, Paracelsus’s _Alchemic Medicine_ , and an anatomy book that Roy had entirely forgotten that he owns.

That’s… interesting.

Roy manages to contain the question for a full ninety seconds before the silent war in his head declares a truce. Curiosity won’t kill him, and Ed won’t blame him. He sits down in the other chair. “What are you working on?”

“Right this second?” Ed says without looking up. “Arrays you could use to take a skin sample and expand it hugely off of something kind of like an agar—specialized, y’know, skin-food, more or less; combination of elemental components that’d help it grow—so you could make completely custom reparative material for skin grafts. Can’t get graft versus host if what you’ve got is made _from_ the person who’s getting it, y’know?”

They both know that the single most practical application of such an impossibly beautiful advance would be burn wounds. Neither of them has to say it, and Roy doesn’t have to say _Has it always been your life’s mission to try to make up for my mistakes?_

“Big picture,” Ed says, still without raising his eyes from the text, “is that my State Alchemist certification’s coming up. Yours is, too, which… well, I’m gonna go out on a limb here and guess that that’s not helping with this whole…” He gestures to Roy’s entire being, which is evidently the problem, and which evidently also doesn’t merit a reading hiatus today, since he still hasn’t looked up. “…situation.”

It also goes without saying that he’s right.

“I’m a person,” Roy says. “Not a situation.”

“Sure,” Ed says. He licks his left index fingertip and flips a page. “Anyway, I’m using their test as a test, is the thing. I’m gonna bring them the single most brilliant thing I can possibly produce, but in medical alchemy, and see if I still pass.”

Roy watches Ed for a long second. It must be longer than he realizes, because Ed glances up for the first time since this conversation began.

“To see if it’s less corrupt,” Roy says. “That’s your intention. Because if they only recertify you when you bring them genius that manifests in big, showy, destructive displays—”

“Then it’s still just another training camp for the war machine,” Ed says, and the slow start of a blinding grin makes Roy’s chest tighten up in an alarming way. “And I’m gonna have my work cut out for me trying to tear it down and build it back up again from scratch.”

“Why not eradicate it altogether?” Roy asks. “It was a tool for the Homunculi before anything else—to attract those of us who were stupid enough, first, to push the boundaries of morality in the name of science; and then still power-hungry enough to walk right into their hands. I suspect that what fine soldiers we make was just a happy coincidence.”

“It could be something good,” Ed says. “Even if it’s not headed in the right direction yet, that could change. Could _be_ changed. The structure’s not bad, and if you repurposed the institutional support but eliminated some of the stupid requirements that put people at each other’s throats…” He works his jaw for a second, and then he smiles again, wryly this time. “Don’t have to burn it to the ground just because it’s not perfect yet.”

Roy does not miss the significance of Ed looking directly at him while uttering those words.

But Ed doesn’t have the market cornered on contrariness just yet, and he hasn’t established a monopoly on changing the subject, either, although sometimes he makes an effort.

“Can I get you some more coffee?” Roy asks.

“Can’t hurt,” Ed says.

“Are you sure?” Roy asks.

“Yes,” Ed says. “We’re somethin’ like fifty cups away from the part where it can seriously fuck you up. We would’ve had to start shotgunning _real_ early today if we wanted to try for that one.”

Roy folds his arms. “Is it redundant if I say that I’m both alarmed and unsurprised that you know that?”

“Yup,” Ed says.

“Perhaps some tea instead,” Roy says.

“Don’t wimp out on me now, Mustang,” Ed says, but Roy’s already turning and starting down the hall. “Hey!” Ed calls after him. “Truth take your eardrums, too, asshole?”

“What?” Roy calls back. “I can’t hear you.”

The wail of agony that he earns for that is absolutely priceless—which is good, because coffee isn’t, and Ed’s tenancy has doubled the quantity that he has to buy.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I really hated this chapter while I was editing it just now, but I hate everything this week, so I am gonna fling it out here and hope that your mileage varies! ♥
> 
> Take care of yourselves and others and be as safe and compassionate out there as you can. I love you all. ♥

As they make their way to bed that night, Ed is quiet—perhaps unusually so, although sometimes it’s difficult to tell the difference between solemn-quiet and the ordinary lost-in-thought kind. Roy vacillates about which is more likely until they lie down, and Ed folds both hands behind his head, which makes Roy very suspicious indeed.

“I got a serious question for you,” Ed says.

That doesn’t help.

Roy takes a moment to brace himself, and then he breathes deeply and says, “What’s that?”

Ed swallows and then clears his throat. “You ever think about just… quitting?”

“The military?” Roy asks.

“All of it,” Ed says. “The whole… just… closing the book on it. Maybe telling a couple people where you’re going, but mostly just… go. Fuck right off. Leave it all behind.”

“I’ve… thought about it,” Roy says, softly. “But never as anything but a sad little fantasy.” He pauses, watches out of the corner of his eye— “Have you?”

“Here and there,” Ed says. “Not… to the point of, like, planning anything. But sometimes it just—I mean—shit. I’ve never done anything for _me_. And the stuff I used to do for other people—the traveling and the missions and stuff—was so much cooler than anything I’ve done in the last… however many years it’s been. I don’t even know anymore. I can’t keep track. It’s just—the days just blur all together, and the more of them there are, the faster they go, and it’s like… whoever I used to be is just… vanishing. Time’s just blotting him out. And I’m left with this boring-ass version of myself who just wants to have a good cup of coffee every morning and not be _too_ exhausted at the end of the day, who doesn’t really give a shit if he stands for anything or changes the world or _matters_ , because lately that shit sounds like too much work.”

Roy closes his eyes for a few seconds. It was inevitable, wasn’t it? And still, like a fool, he hoped…

“All of those things I said about squandering your youth?” he says. “That was more or less what I was talking about.”

“You were telling me to shack up with strangers,” Ed says. “That’s not the same thing.”

“Perhaps not the details,” Roy says, “but in intention—yes. It is. You let Alphonse go racing off into the desert chasing a rather dangerous dream, all things considered. Why won’t you afford yourself the same courtesy to go out and make some brand-new mistakes? This is the best part of your life to do it. There’s plenty of time to be sensible several years from now.”

“Somebody’s gotta make sure this place is still _here_ when Al gets back,” Ed says. “Not just—y’know, cats, apartment, whatever. But the world he knows. I owe him that.”

“There are catsitters,” Roy says. “You could take smaller trips—a few months at a time. I’m sure you have the money saved; I know—”

“I can’t run,” Ed says, staring at the ceiling, mouth in a thin, hard line. “I can’t just—drop everything and everybody and just _go_. I can’t. And it scares the fuck out of me when I want to, because it makes me like _him_.”

“You’re not,” Roy says. “I promise you—”

“He wasn’t even _bad_ ,” Ed says. “I mean—bad to us, sure, but—he did the right thing. Grand scheme, big picture, he did. I know that. And I sort of fucking respect it, in a backwards sort of way, but I just—I get these—I don’t know, _yearnings_ in my fucking gut to pick up and walk away, and then it makes me sick, and I just—”

“You don’t have to do anything,” Roy says, as gently as he can. “That’s the real beauty—possibly the only real beauty—of being an adult, Ed. There are legal ramifications to consider, obviously, and some fights that you know you can’t win, but… your choices are yours. And you can dwell on them for however long you like.”

Ed works his jaw for a few seconds before he says, “What do you think I should do?”

Something in Roy’s chest jumps towards his throat—something hot and silvery that tries to whisper _Stay_.

He chokes it down and makes himself think critically instead.

“I think that you should sleep on it,” he says. “I don’t mean _now_ ,” he adds when Ed starts to protest that he’s being a sarcastic bastard or whatever combination of syllables it is tonight. “Just… generally. Don’t pick a course right away. I think that you need more data before you do anything—I think you should explore more around here, nearby, before you start putting miles between yourself and anything that looks familiar. And I think that… you should talk it through with Alphonse. Of everyone in the world, I think he understands the unique combination of feelings and experiences that you’ve had the best, so his advice will be much better than what you’d get from someone who’s only guessing at what you might need.”

Ed continues gazing at the ceiling for a few moments longer, worrying his bottom lip between his teeth, which is… lots of things that Roy doesn’t plan to acknowledge the particulars of any time soon.

“Shit,” Ed says at last, shoving both hands into his hair. “You know how much I hate it when you make perfect sense?”

“I have an inkling,” Roy says.

“I bet you do,” Ed says.

He starts to shift and then goes still, wincing, and darts a glance at Roy. He sets his jaw. He grimaces.

After a moment that Roy spends blinking, it clicks.

“Did you get your automail stuck in your hair?” Roy asks.

“ _No_ ,” Ed says. “Because that’d be _stupid_.”

“A bit,” Roy says. “Would you like some help?”

“No,” Ed says, rolling halfway onto his side to tilt the tangled appendage in question closer to Roy.

“Pity,” Roy says. As delicately as possible, he starts drawing segments of gold free of the metal knuckles. “I suppose you’ll just have to go through the rest of your life like this.”

“Fuck it,” Ed says. “I’m gonna make it the next big thing.”

Roy extracts enough strands to liberate Ed’s first two fingers. “I’m sure you’d manage it handily.”

Ed groans loud enough to wake the dead and flattens his left hand over his face, which is, of course, the perfect reward.

  


* * *

  


Roy gets his comeuppance.

It’s a form of equivalent exchange, isn’t it? When he overextends himself—when he has the audacity to sink into the good moments and treat them like anything other than an unexpected, undeserved, far-too-generous gift—things snap back like a straining rubber band.

He wakes both frozen and sweating—immobilized but shaking, staring into the dark, watching the afterimages playing across the emptiness—

If he’d moved closer faster, he might have stopped it—might have been able to reach. If he’d _decided_ sooner—if he’d committed just moments quicker to doing the right damn thing—

He wants to believe that he didn’t know. But he did, didn’t he? He must have. He’s been there. He’s been that desperate. He’s tasted the steel on the back of his tongue and begged for a bullet; he _knows_ —

His forehead itches where the spatter of blood and the chips of bone and the thickness of the rest of it would be. His brain has them marked out like a tattoo—overlaid on his skin from that moment until the last one that he’ll get, so that he couldn’t banish it from the halls of his memory if he wanted to.

He lifts his hand to rub it across the prickling spot.

His hand shakes.

There’s nothing there.

On the second try, he manages to wedge his arm beneath himself and sit up, and there’s a wheeze to his own breathing, and the dark room is so _cold_ —

“You were talkin’,” Ed says, blearily, but suddenly enough that Roy startles hard, and his brain shudders the rest of the way into wakefulness, and his heart takes up pounding with a vengeance. “Or—mumbling, I guess. Not exactly a big speech or anythin’.”

“Sorry to wake you,” Roy says, shifting his knees one at a time and setting his feet on the floor.

“Kept sayin’ ‘no’,” Ed says, and the sheets whisper as he moves, but Roy doesn’t turn to try to identify his outline. “You know you’re gonna have to talk about it eventually, right?”

“Eventually,” Roy says, cautiously putting his weight on his feet. They hold him. He stands. That’s progress. “But not tonight.” He takes one step, and then another, towards the bathroom. “Go back to sleep.”

“Fight me,” Ed mutters, but it sounds like he’s rolling over, and Roy reaches out and grips the bathroom doorway for support.

He closes the door as gently as he can and lays both hands flat on the cold tiles of the countertop without turning on the light.

If he flicks the switch, he’ll sacrifice even the slightest chance of sleep. He’s improved at feeling his way around this place regardless, between the restless nights and the slight blurriness of his vision lately. How much could he run the water without rousing Ed? It’s not really as though he retreated here for a reason anyway—not as though he’s seeking the faucet in particular, so much as solace somewhere other than the bed.

He lets his head fall and just breathes, as slowly as he can, until his legs feel steadier. He is not there. He is not in the desert; he is not in that room; there is no guilty blood on his face or his hands or his shirtfront—

There _isn’t_ ; he knows that there isn’t. He’s rational. He is a rational, thinking human being, and he had a nightmare; none of this, no matter how staggeringly possible it feels, is actually real. None of it exists in this moment. All of it is in the past; all of it is _over_ ; it only tails him so damn doggedly because he’s made a wreck of his own being, and all of the things that he really merits slip in through the cracks. They’ll break him open one day, one night—but not this one. Not now.

There is no blood on his face.

There is no—

He reaches up and swipes his tremulous fingertips across his cheek again, just to be sure. It’s a bit clammy—whether that originated in the face or the fingertips he’s still too sleep-muddled to tell—but there’s no sticky film; no clinging stain; no splatter fragmenting as it dries, and as he moves. It’s in the past. It’s in the past, and if he’s fights hard enough, he can force it to leave him alone.

Right?

He drags a deeper breath in, trying to feel it swelling all the way to the base of his lungs, and lets it out slowly. He’s all right. He has to be all right.

He also has to get some sleep, towards which goal being all right faster would be ideal.

He wants to tell himself that it’s just a dream, but that’s the real problem with these—they’re not. They’re every bit as real as the gritty-eyed mornings that follow them; it’s just that they’re _over_ , and he shouldn’t be experiencing them again and again, night after night, dragging his adrenaline-jittery system through the same peaks and valleys and panics every single time until he wakes up drained and disoriented, more rooted in the revival of the dead than in anything that’s still to come.

He turns the tap on and cups his right hand beneath the stream. When the water’s cool, rather than feeling like it originated from very near the heart of Fort Briggs, he lifts his hand to his face and wipes a wet streak through the clamminess. Splashing tends to wake him up too much; he’s groggy enough as it is, and tomorrow morning is likely to…

Well, if there’s anything positive about this, it’s that tomorrow morning, he can sleep in egregiously late and whine and moan to Ed until he gets smothered with one of his own pillows.

At least it’s not a work night.

At least he always wakes up.

He fumbles in the dark until he finds a towel, pats his face dry, and then forges his way back to the bed as quietly as he can.

Evidently, it’s not quiet enough.

“So,” Ed mumbles. “When’re you gonna stop pretendin’ like not telling anybody is making you better?”

“I thought I instructed you to go to sleep,” Roy says.

Ed snickers sleepily. “Worked out for you about as well as it did every other time your dumb ass ‘instructed’ me to do somethin’. Answer the question.”

“I don’t know,” Roy says. “Better morally or overall?”

“Both,” Ed says. “Either. I dunno. Go to sleep.”

Roy adjusts the comforter and attempts to beam sarcasm through the dark in Ed’s direction. “How could I possibly refuse when you ask so nicely?”

“Fuck you,” Ed says. “’M always nice.”

“No, you’re not,” Roy says. “But you are always good.”

“S’too late for this shit,” Ed says.

“That’s what I’ve been telling you,” Roy says.

There’s a huff, and then a noise that might be automail punching the pillow, and then some settling, and then Ed says, “G’night already.”

“Goodnight, Ed,” Roy says.

A sick part of him wants to say _Sweet dreams_.

  


* * *

  


“Coffee’s done,” Ed says when Roy staggers into the kitchen the next morning. “Been done for a while, but I don’t think it’s stale yet.”

“Is that the right term for it?” Roy asks, because apparently his impulse control still sleeps fitfully upstairs like the rest of him was doing until a few moments ago. “To me, ‘stale’ sounds like… bread-based foods. Crackers. Would it—”

“Ask me if I give a single fuck,” Ed says, but the smirk behind the rim of his mug softens it a bit.

“All right,” Roy says. “Do you give a single fuck?”

Ed laughs, bright and clear with his eyes shut, like it’s safe here, and there’s enough joy left in the world to make up the difference sometimes.

“Hey,” he says, although mercifully he’s waited until after Roy’s downed almost half a cup. “I gotta go feed the cats and dig up some old books that I think might be in one of the closets, but I’m not sure. You gonna be okay on your own for a while?”

“Somehow, I think I’ll find a way to muddle through,” Roy says.

“Asshole,” Ed says, amiably. “Okay. You can always call me if you change your mind.”

“I was actually thinking of taking a stroll,” Roy says.

Ed’s eyebrows rise.

“A jaunt,” Roy says. “A constitutional. A perambulation.”

“You trying to scare me out of here faster, or what?” Ed says.

Roy blinks at him. “A… promenade?”

Ed rolls his eyes so hard that it must be painful. “Gonna take my fucking chances with the cats.”

  


* * *

  


Sunday’s a good day for it: even leaving the house before ten, he passes half a dozen flower vendors on his way, and one of them has what he’s looking for.

He never brings anything other than white calla lilies. He’s run his fingertips along the cold skin of the petals of too many other kinds and colors to number, but none of them have ever felt right. The paper wrapped around the stems crinkles softly as he tightens his grip, squares his shoulders, and strides through the wrought-iron archway. No reason to hesitate. He could follow these paths in his sleep—and has; or did, sometimes, before the recent scenes took precedence and crushed out all the ordinary dreams that his subconscious used to muster.

It’s been a while. He hasn’t come since the trip to Ishval—since he floundered his way back here, and the worst of it set in.

He was scared. He was scared that the numbness would have taken this, too—that he’d arrive here, and look down, and reach for the bitter, beautiful combination of agony and solace, and there would be nothing. That the wash of rage-edged, swirling malaise would swallow this, too, and take the last part of Maes that he has left: the old, unfaded, reliable pain.

He kneels to lay the flowers down and then situates himself a little further back from the headstone. Have the letters weathered slightly? Has it really been that long?

“I need to talk to you,” Roy says. He feels like a child, sitting with his legs crossed on the grass. At least it’s not wet. “It’s about Ed.”

He’s gotten used to not expecting a response, but it still stings, sometimes—the wishing. It rankles.

“But first,” he says, “since I know this is the part that would matter most to you—they’re doing so well. They’ve come so far, and they’ve made so many friends, and they’ve finally… settled. Well—Al more than Ed, I suppose, but I don’t imagine that surprises anyone. Al’s in Xing at the university in the capital now, presumably charming the poofy pants off of every single citizen fool enough to cross his path. Ed’s still here—still in the military, no less, which I think shocked all of us. He’s in your old department. Lieutenant-Colonel Ross is running it now. You’d like what she’s done with the place. _She_ came back from Xing with a new kind of iron in her—she was always strong, and I think you saw it faster than anyone else, but these days she’s nigh-on unstoppable. It hasn’t torn the sweetness from her, though. You always knew how to pick ’em. Even so, I think Ed probably would have jumped off of my ship and onto yours a hell of a lot faster if you were still here. He always knew he could trust you. I think I was more of a…” He pauses, savors it—fancy that; he’s reveling in the act of sharing a bad pun with a dead man. “…dark horse in that regard.”

The breeze pulls at the flower petals, shivers through the paper, tugs at his hair.

“I miss you,” he says. “Every single fucking day, Maes. Every minute. I even miss the stupid photos. You’d be so much worse now—you’d make me put my glasses on so that I could see all of the details, which would cumulatively waste a significantly greater portion of my time. You’d be harassing me constantly to cozy up with anybody that I could get my hands on so that you could give me a camera as a wedding present.”

He draws a breath.

“She’s doing brilliantly in school,” he says. “Elysia. Sassy as all get-out, but she _is_ yours, and you’d be the first to tell me that Gracia’s a saint, so there’s no one else to blame.”

It seems mathematically impossible that he could have ached for so long, so deeply that his insides hardly remember a life before they were scar tissue straight through—and that it could also be a concrete, countable number of days since Maes Hughes died and bled out in a phone booth on a Central City street. How can an eternity of absence and a few _X_ marks on a calendar somehow coexist?

“She’s going to be all right,” he says. “She’d be better with you—happier. We all would. But she’s strong, and she’s wonderful, and she’s going to set out and do great things. Gracia’s teaching. I think… well. I think staying occupied has been good for her, but I worry, too. She just keeps giving. I know; I know; it’s in her nature, given that she’s an angel and so forth, but—I worry she does it in the hopes that someday the universe will give her something back. Equivalent exchange, of course—did you think you could escape me iterating that at you at the worst possible moments just by _dying_? Think again. I…” He sighs. “Hell. I just worry that she won’t—get anything, I mean. I worry that she’ll keep giving until she’s emptied herself out, and it won’t ever be enough.”

Roy breathes again, deeper still, and pushes a hand back through his hair.

“Speaking of beautiful martyrs,” he says, “let me tell you about Ed.”

He looks out across the grass. The wind whispers across the hill again, and the stalks undulate like rippling water.

“I wasn’t surprised that he took an interest,” he says. “And I wasn’t surprised that his instinct was… well. A tough sort of compassion, but compassion all the same. He’s always been like that. And he can be callous, on occasion, but it’s always out of ignorance, not intention. I was expecting some sympathy to try to repay the old debts, but I never would have imagined that he’d be so damn _understanding_. I never would have dreamed that he’d… get it. That he’d care. That he’d just keep… staying. No matter what I threw at him; no matter how pathetic it got.” He manages something like a shaky laugh. “It’s gotten pretty pathetic. I’d say ‘believe me’, but I know you would.”

He leans forward and reaches out to rearrange the leaves of one of the flowers. Aesthetics don’t particularly matter to the dead, but perhaps the thought will count for something.

“He came under the auspices of friendship,” Roy says. “Isn’t that supposed to be sacred? I suppose you and I never stood on ceremony, but… he just kept coming _back_. Maybe that was what did it. I don’t know. He’s still willing to come back. Some days—most of them—it seems like he wants to. Like he might enjoy my company, in some strange way; like it’s desirable, rather than a dependable last resort.”

He runs both hands over his face. 

“That’s what I’ve been waiting for,” he says. “Isn’t it? Since… the beginning; since _you_ ; since I realized that I’d shared this curse with Riza, and ruined so much of what and who she could have been, and that she’s still too much better than I am to take anything from. Since I realized that if I let her carry me, she’d do it for the rest of our lives—but out of duty.”

He looks at the sky. A handful of clouds; no answers.

“I’ve been waiting for someone to _choose_ to come back,” he says. “To _want_ to stay. And I kept trying to scare him off. I swear I did; I wouldn’t lie to you and your dad complex about that. I gave him as many reasons as I could to get up and walk away. But he just—didn’t. He hasn’t. And I don’t… I’m starting to think he won’t. Not on his own. Not even if I find him a few more reasons, and they’re even worse than the ones that came before.”

He holds both hands over his face this time, pressing the heels in against his eyes until sparks and static move across the insides of his eyelids, and he can almost pretend that someone’s there.

“It’s just… it’s my fault,” he says. “Isn’t it? It’s my fault that I fell in love with him when he was trying to be kind.” He parts his fingers. “I hope you’re embarrassed for me. I’m embarrassed for myself.”

He drops both hands again, sweeping them across the grass, letting the stalks tickle his palms and his fingertips.

“That’s stealing, isn’t it?” he says. “In a way. Twisting his intentions. Pinning emotions that he never meant to invite back on him. It’s not what he signed up for. He was being charitable. This one’s all on me.”

He shifts, settling his hands behind him so that he can lean back on his arms and stare skyward. The clouds are the wispy, curling kind, distant and serene. Not so much as a premonition of rain.

“I miss you,” Roy says. “I hate that we treat those words like they’re ordinary. Like they’re simple. I hate that it sounds childish out loud. It is an agony every single day, but it sounds _small_ when it’s spoken. I miss everything. And these days, I think I miss your crap advice the most of all. You’d tell me twelve stupid things to do about this, and then once I’d eliminated all of them from my possible courses of action, I’d have a much better idea which one to take.”

He wraps his arms around his knees—if he’s going to sound like a child complaining, he might as well look the part.

“I destroyed what was left of his youth,” he says. “Not just the part that was already doomed, mind you—he stuck with me for months after he was free to leave, and now he’s committed himself to Investigations. He’s dug in. And I’ve tried explaining to him that this is his last chance to run amok and wreck his body and get away with having fun, but he won’t hear it, and he sure as hell won’t try it. It’s too late. That part I did to him. I took the opportunities away—opened other doors, it could be said, but the best ones are all locked up tight behind him now, and that’s not… fair. None of it’s fair. And I know it never is, and obviously _he_ knows, but it—for once in his life, he should be entitled to something unambiguously good. He paid all of his damn dues; he shouldn’t have to settle for the survivable side of mediocrity anymore. Things should be _good_ for him. He should be allowed to enjoy his life now. Wasn’t that the whole point?”

The letters carved into the stone offer up no answers, and the numbers aren’t much more help.

“He’s shackling himself to a sinking ship,” Roy says. “If you were here, you could talk some damn sense into him—you could try, at least. He’d listen. He always listened to you. I might be able to convince Riza to talk to him, but I’d have to tell her all of this first, and I don’t… It’s… fragile. All of it. I don’t want her to feel responsible in any way for how I got here—how it got to be this bad—and that’s the reason he’s entrenched. The person that I was before that trip didn’t need Ed—wanted him, probably, in an abstract way, but… I thought that maybe if I never looked at it head-on, the shadows wouldn’t ever solidify. I suppose I should know better than that by now.”

He lays his head on his right knee and watches the wind slithering through the grass.

“I don’t have it in me,” he says, “to hurt him enough to make him leave. Not anymore. But if I let him stay, I’ll do it over time instead—slowly. One sip of poison at a time. That’s how I’ve always done it, and it’s a far worse toxin these days than it ever was before.”

A woman and a little boy, both bundled up against the wind and holding hands, move along the path that leads up across the hill to his left and over into another little grove of graves. The woman’s carrying red roses. Roy thinks of Gracia, and of Caretta, and of all of the people that he could have been. Between the distance and the wind, they won’t hear him, but he keeps his voice low anyway. The fewer concerned citizens that report General Roy Mustang talking to himself in cemeteries, the better, most likely.

“I have to pass my damn certification again soon,” he says. “What do you think would happen if I lit a trail of letters in the air to read ‘Hakuro is a pig’?”

  


* * *

  


It’s probably best to give Ed as long a break from babysitting as possible: he’s always been at his most brilliant when he’s bored, so it’s likely that he’ll make much swifter progress on his research if Roy’s out of the picture for a few hours more. Besides, the nip of the wind has shepherded some of the populace inside, which leaves the streets much quieter than Roy would have expected for late morning on a Sunday. If he could just tune out the unheralded sputtering of the occasional exhaust pipe, and the periodic roar of revving engines, and the doors slamming, and the shopkeepers shouting—

Well, if he could silence the whole world, all of this would be easier, but the point is that today isn’t especially bad. His shoulders haven’t started throbbing from the tension yet, and it hasn’t crept up the tendons in his neck to start banging around in his skull, either, and he’ll take that for as long as he can.

The library proves even more subdued than the streets. Ed’s not-so-secret admirer doesn’t appear to be in today, which is good, because Roy would rather that no one recognize him. Out of uniform, with his head down, he imagines that he might be unremarkable enough to pass unnoticed.

He follows the signs to the section for the sciences, and from there he winds through the aisles, scanning spines, until he finds a selection of books on psychiatry.

He has to start somewhere if he wants to get anywhere at all.

  


* * *

  


Riza always implies that his singular talent for skimming material and identifying the most important parts is reductive and dangerous—if only she could see him now.

He doesn’t check anything out, of course; that would leave a nigh-on iridescent trail for anyone sniffing around his business. Hopefully sorting through his stack of books at a reading table three aisles down from where he found them and then re-shelving them himself will bury the scent.

None of what he finds is especially revelatory, and much of it substantiates some of Ed’s earliest and most persistent assertions—namely that addressing the incident directly frequently proves constructive—but it gives him a few things to turn over in his mind as he heads homeward. He stops at the little deli halfway between; Ed mentioned during one of their meals that he has a weakness for salami, and he’s surely worked up an appetite wrangling cats. There’s something pleasant about carrying a well-weighted bag as one walks, in any case; a vague sense of productivity unrelated to any actual production, a—

A car horn blares at the light ahead, and he startles so hard that he nearly drops it—and nearly twists his ankle, and nearly rips his skeleton out of his skin.

In the first instant, fury floods through him at the driver of that car—what in this _miserable_ world could compel a person to lean on the horn like that, imposing their own momentary aggravation on every single unsuspecting passerby? How indescribably selfish would one have to be to prioritize—

The second instant fills him with an equally incandescent anger at himself, for being so pitifully susceptible to such a minor stimulus that he’s shaking slightly in its wake. How sad a shadow of a man has he become that the bleat of a car horn can reduce him to _trembling_?

And then he’s angry at himself for _being_ angry. What a stupid thing to let himself suffer over—whatever happened to his touted self control? He’s better than this; he’s always been better than this; he used to glide on the surface of ordinary grievances; he used to take in the whole world so easily, and pick and choose the parts of it that mattered, and react to those alone, on his own time, on his own terms. It’s the only real talent that he’s ever had—the only one that he built himself; the only one that’s raised him of his own merit and earned him real respect. It’s the one thing other than killing that he’s ever been capable of.

And now it’s—not _gone_ , not quite, but fragmented, splintering, halfway to shattered, weak like the rest of him. Now it’s a luxury that he has to scrabble for instead of his deadliest weapon and his most reliable shield.

Is he even the same man without it? Is he still the same person when he’s losing his grip on the most fundamental things that used to define him?

He has to stop doing this—stop tearing himself apart at every opportunity; stop trying to convince himself that he deserves this and more and worse. It’s true, for one thing, so convincing himself is redundant and unnecessary; and he’ll never make another iota of amends if he succumbs to it. He has to do better than this.

When he steps up to his front door, reaching for his keys, it sweeps open, and a familiar head appears around the bottom of the doorframe—still firmly attached to the body it belongs to, which confirms that this is not, for once, a morbid dream.

“Hi,” Ed says. “I’m working on an array that’ll set off an alarm in your bedroom if somebody messes with your hinges.”

Roy blinks down. The way the unbound hair pools on the floorboards has knotted his stomach so tightly that it’s strangled any hope of speech.

“It’s what I would do,” Ed says. “If I was breaking in.”

“What do you mean, ‘if’?” Roy manages. “You already have. Several times now.”

Ed looks idly up at the ceiling. “True,” he says. He turns to Roy again, and the grin spreading across his face— “Whatever you brought smells good. Anything in there for me?”

“Might be,” Roy says, stepping in and navigating carefully around him to avoid treading on a single golden hair. “How are the cats?”

“Slightly evil,” Ed says. “But now they’re slightly evil and fed.” He sits up as Roy sidles into the kitchen. “Can I be slightly evil and fed?”

“I think you’re only capable of one of those things,” Roy says, setting the bag down on the counter, “but it’s the one that I was already working on.”

Somehow, afternoon unfurls into evening, and the orange light of sunset scatters sparks of impossible fire through Ed’s hair where he’s still lying on the floor muttering increasingly virulently at the door hinge. Shortly—pun unintentional but entirely too fitting to ignore—before Roy’s sorted out dinner, a loud “ _Aha_!” alerts him to at least a modicum of success.

Ed explains how it works over dinner—evidently Al called earlier and babbled in some detail about the practical components of the distance-spanning dual array system central to alkahestry, which inspired Ed to set up a trigger array at Roy’s door that activates a second array upstairs in the bedroom. Anyone who gives up on the three deadbolts and tampers with the hinges will sound the alarm, and Roy will have plenty of time to saunter downstairs, dramatically tugging at his gloves, before the culprit even makes it inside.

“Some people might consider this enabling my paranoia,” Roy says.

“Yeah, well, some people are stupid,” Ed says. “Lots, actually. I consider it giving you the tools to get through the life you’ve got right now as well as you can.”

There’s no smugness to it—just the same calm, sharp-eyed matter-of-factness that Ed’s conviction always lends him when he’s positive that he’s done the right thing.

Roy never had a choice, and he never stood a chance. The instant that he came close enough to catalogue the way that different hours’ light alters the color of Ed’s eyes, he was doomed.

“Thank you,” Roy says—for the arrays, for the words, for the torment.

Ed shrugs his left shoulder and then jumps up and grabs Roy’s mostly-empty plate. “Lemme get the dishes. Go put some music on and think nice thoughts or something.”

Even just watching him walk to the sink is strangely mesmerizing—the tail of his hair swings; his belt gleams, the mess of silver studs across it almost gaudy enough to distract Roy’s attention from the extraordinarily gorgeous ass just below it. “Is that the next step in my recovery?”

“No idea,” Ed says. “Worth a try.”

It’s certainly better than sitting here staring at Ed’s shoulder-blades and willing his clothes to disintegrate, so Roy stands, massages at the small of his back, and then pries himself away from the lovelorn gazing in order to start for the living room. “I suppose you’re right.”

“I usually am,” Ed calls after him.

“I wouldn’t go that far,” Roy calls back.

He can’t quite think of any music he wants to listen to—likely that’s a bad sign—so he settles on the couch with the newspaper and looks at the ceiling instead of at the print for a while. His glasses are in his pocket anyway; lifting them out and putting them on sounds like a substantial quantity of effort for very little gain.

Maybe this is all there is: trudging through the weeks, holding his breath and his tongue and steeling himself at every turn, with the solitary goal of sliding through the weekends in a haze of better sleep and slower meals and time spent swanning his way into fruitless infatuations. Sometimes he feels things; sometimes they’re good. Sometimes he wakes to Ed, and coffee, and mornings at the cemetery—and he has regrets, yes; more than he can number even on days like this, but sometimes they don’t seem to seek to drown him.

The question is—is it enough? Can he live with this, like this, _as_ this?

Tomorrow he heads back into the maelstrom, and he doesn’t know if he’ll make it out alive. Is it worth it, when this is the sum total of what he has to look forward to?

Motion in the hall draws his eye: Ed hesitates in the doorway for a fraction of a second before sauntering in and dropping onto the couch beside him.

“There was something my mom used to say,” he says. “Al picked it up. She’d say ‘If you think any louder, the windows will shake.’ I mean, obviously it wasn’t supposed to sound like a cool thing, but as a kid I always thought it was awesome that my brain could be like thunder or something, so I’d think as loud as I could.”

Roy looks at him.

Ed raises his eyebrows.

“I think I need a drink,” Roy says.

He gauges the distance to the liquor cabinet in the opposite corner of the room, which—while much more accessible than any of the stores and stashes in the kitchen—looks prohibitively remote right now.

“Okay,” Ed says, so mildly that Roy glances at him sideways to try to assess his expression. “When was the last time you had one?”

“About an hour before you stole my flask,” Roy says. “The first flask you stole. I never even got a chance to appreciate the second one.”

“You can’t prove that was me,” Ed says. He’s trained his gaze on the mantel above the fireplace, and the hint of a smile that flickers around his mouth gives Roy nothing to go on. “That’s a pretty good streak, though, given the circumstances—don’t you think? You sure you don’t want to keep it running for another day?”

It’s sweet that Ed thinks that Roy might have the willpower to conquer his vices, but it’s the inertia that’s keeping him on the couch, not his principles. “I’m not sure of much of anything.”

Ed folds his hands in his lap, knitting the fingers together and then turning the whole tangle back and forth, and the lamplight dances across the steel.

“You know you’re doing really well, right?” he says.

Roy—

—can’t even find sufficient breath to sputter with for several long seconds.

“You are,” Ed says without looking up. “I know… I mean, shit, I don’t even know—I don’t know how hard it is. I know it’s fucking hard. But you’re really trying to get through it, and you’re getting a tiny bit better every single day you keep hacking away at it. I know it doesn’t usually seem like that from the inside—and sometimes it feels like you’re backsliding so far that none of what you did the whole week before even makes a difference, but it’s never really linear like that. It’s not a one step forward, two steps back sort of a thing. It’s more like having a big pile of string that’s all just knotted together, and trying to separate it into pieces, I guess. And sometimes you untangle one knot only to find a much, much bigger one right underneath, and then it starts to feel like—what’s the point? But you are getting somewhere. And it’s tough—it’s really tough. But you’re tougher. You’re the only one who doesn’t believe that.”

Ed continues to look serenely at the wall as he shifts his leg and bumps his right knee against Roy’s.

_That_ —

Can’t be anything but deliberate; can’t be anything but a message—but Roy can’t afford to interpret it incorrectly, and there are so many thousands of languages that contact can translate to.

“You don’t believe me, do you?” Ed asks.

“I believe that you believe it,” Roy says, which is the truth. “I think—well, I _know_ it’s not quite as… much as it was before you installed yourself here. I hope you’re aware of how sincerely I appreciate that.”

“You’re the one who did all of it,” Ed says, which is patently false, but he may well believe that, too. “I just kicked your ass a little bit. It’s still your ass that’s responsible. I know it doesn’t count for a whole hell of a lot until you can fake it in front of the generals, though. Is that the part you’re stuck on?”

Roy also can’t afford to stare at Ed’s knee and will it to yield up a clearer explanation of its owner’s intentions. “Partly. It’s… the dark seems very… deep. Some nights.”

The way that Ed looks at him is not fair. Compassion is Edward Elric’s lifeblood; this is nothing out of the ordinary for him, but for a man so starved of his own esteem and so long-since forsaken that anything that could pass for approval tastes something like forgiveness—

“I know,” Ed says. “But—c’mon. You’re the Flame Alchemist. If it gets too dark, light that fucker up.”

“Poetic,” Roy says.

Ed winks.

Roy chokes.

“Hey,” Ed says, gesturing to the newspaper still lying in Roy’s unfeeling hands. “Are you committed to reading that drivel right this second, or can I bounce a couple of research ideas off of you first?”

One thing that Roy suspects that Ed would not believe would be the honest answer: _Even the opportunity to bask in the radiance of your genius is an honor and a privilege_.

Instead he says, “The state-subsidized gossip rag can wait. What can I help with?”

  


* * *

  


Roy never gets around to the newspaper, which is probably a good thing. Rare are the occasions when it does anything remotely positive for his emotional state, and Sunday nights, hung between the dwindling gasp of weekend freedom and the block of drudgery scheduled out ahead, are perilous enough as it stands.

“You want to play chess?” Ed asks about half an hour before Roy should really make a strong attempt at sleep.

“Do _you_ want to play chess?” Roy asks. He fetched Ed a glass of water several minutes into the research rant, which made for a nice, plausible excuse to settle in the armchair upon his return, rather than joining Ed on the couch again and courting all-new varieties of danger.

This position, obviously, has its own downsides, foremost among them how unreasonably attractive Ed can make a boneless sprawl across the cushions. Roy imagines that anyone else would look sloppy, or lazy, or generally unremarkable, but Ed looks like a lovingly-molded statue of an indolent young god. If the light were any kinder to his hair and his skin and the dip of his eyelashes, Roy would have dropped to both knees and begged for favor by now. As it is, he’s barely managed to hold back.

“I want to figure it out,” Ed says. “And I don’t think it’s possible to do that in a theoretical way; I think you have to _try_ it. Which is a pain in the ass. Theoretical’s always easier, and you can do it by yourself in a quiet room instead of making a fool of yourself messing it up.”

“The secret to chess,” Roy says, “is that you have to be bloodthirsty. I’m afraid you may not have it in you.”

He elects not to mention that Alphonse would probably be _brilliant_.

“There’s got to be more to it than that,” Ed says, and the set of his jaw speaks to years of honing that stubbornness to an edge sharper than any knife in a mortal arsenal. “I mean, it’s all just—logic-math. That’s my _thing_.”

“There’s an emotional component,” Roy says. “Very much like poker. And you have to be willing to sacrifice your own safety and all of your weapons to be successful.”

“You mean you have to be ready to lose if you ever wanna win,” Ed says.

“Yes,” Roy says. “And you have to know how likely your opponent is to hurl themselves upon their own sword.”

Ed sighs, feelingly. “Maybe I’ll just get another book.”

Roy tries not to watch the way the breath moves through him—filling his chest, shifting his hips; his whole body rolls with it, and it’s just—

“You’d probably enjoy that more,” Roy gets out. “Are you almost ready to call it a night?”

“We can call it whatever the hell you want,” Ed says. “Ready when you are.”

  


* * *

  


“Let me take a guess,” Ed mumbles about an hour later. “You can’t sleep.”

Roy glances towards him, not that it makes any difference in the dark. “Guilty as charged. Why are you still awake?”

“’Cause you’re shakin’ the windowpanes,” Ed says.

Roy manages to suppress the worst of the wince. “I’m sorry. I… wish I could help it. I’ve been thinking that maybe I should try sleeping pills.”

“Nuh-uh,” Ed says. “Don’t fuck with those. They fuck with you right back, way worse.”

Roy blinks, which also doesn’t make a difference. “I—do they?”

“For me, anyway,” Ed says. “You remember that one chimera case in West City that I had to go on just a couple months before I switched over to Investigations?”

To say that Roy remembers understates matters somewhat: he knew it would be difficult, and he tried to take every precaution possible to smooth out the journey and lessen the weight, but the moment that Ed stepped in through the office door the morning after has burned itself into his memory like an iron brand. Ed looked so _ragged_ that in the first instant that he was almost unrecognizable; and Roy’s voice almost shook—

“Yes,” he says.

“It was right after Al decided he was gonna go to Xing,” Ed says, “which… really didn’t help. But a lot of it was the fucking mission. And anyway—couldn’t sleep on the train, couldn’t sleep at all the first night out there, so when it got to the second one, and I was still just lyin’ there staring at the ceiling, I thought I’d probably better take matters into my own hands, and I tracked down a little tiny pharmacy that was still open, and… yeah. First I just felt like I was dying, and then I hallucinated some _wild_ shit, and then my brain was so bent out of shape that I honestly thought that the best solution to the pills making me weird instead of sleepy was to keep taking ’em until they started to work. Realized after a couple minutes of feeling even _more_ like I was dying that that was a shitty-ass idea, made myself throw up, dragged myself down to the hotel lobby, and got them to take me to the hospital. Wasn’t much they could do except stick me on saline, and they wouldn’t give me an anesthetic to put me under no matter how much I begged, ’cause they couldn’t know how much of the chemicals from the pills were still in my system, so… it was a shitshow. Good times.”

Roy is surprised that he has retained both the physical and the intellectual capacity for speech. “I… didn’t know about any of that.”

“I know,” Ed says. “Last thing I wanted was to be the laughingstock of the office if you guys found out.”

“I would never have laughed at you for something like that,” Roy says. “I would have been worried about you.”

“That would’ve been even worse,” Ed says.

“How did I not hear about it?” Roy asks. “It wasn’t in the report; you didn’t bill it back to the department—I checked. I checked _twice_ , because you had those gashes on your neck, so I was specifically looking for medical charges, and I couldn’t find any.”

“I didn’t want it to be a big deal,” Ed says. “Just paid it out of pocket and asked them to keep it on the down-low. Anyway, that’s not the point.”

Roy has been haunted endlessly over the course of the intervening years by the look Ed wore when he walked back in. He hadn’t been able to imagine any other explanation for Ed leaving so soon afterwards except that it was some sort of last straw—Roy sending Ed out to the likes of _that_ , knowing what it would do to him, knowing what it meant.

But it was more than that—or more complicated, at the very least. It wasn’t _just_ him prioritizing the report above the rapport and inadvertently pushing Ed directly out the door.

“The point is,” Ed is saying, “sleeping pills will mess you up. Last thing you want to do is play that game on a weeknight.”

“While you make a compelling case,” Roy says, “I’m afraid that I’m more suspicious of the pharmacy and your dosage than of the pills themselves.”

“Famous last words,” Ed says. “Just for that, if you try ’em anyway, and all your furniture comes to life and starts attacking you, I’m not gonna help you defend yourself.”

Roy makes sure that the overstated pout is audible in his voice. “You’re not?”

“Of course I fucking am,” Ed says. He rolls over. “Shut up. Go to sleep.”

“Goodnight, Ed,” Roy says, and the smile’s probably audible too.

  


* * *

  


The missive arrives by messenger at ten minutes past ten.

“From General Belmor, sir,” the corporal says, snapping off a crisp salute as Roy saunters over towards the door to meet him. Roy does not slow his stride, but he does shoot an evil eye at the particularly egregious offenders on his team, who could stand to follow such a fine example of military etiquette. Or any example, really. It’s a pity that they’re all so wonderful, because he really ought to have kicked their asses for the insubordination a long time ago.

“What is it?” he asks the corporal at the door, striking the perfect tonal balance between casual and disinterested, so that the poor sap will actually believe that he’s either too lazy or too busy to read the thing, and he wants a summary instead.

“I… don’t know, sir,” the corporal says, attempting to suppress a cringe. “The general just said that it was time-sensitive, and for your eyes only.”

Pop quiz passed.

“Very well,” Roy says, following it up with an extremely convincing sigh and raising his arm very slowly to take the note, like he’s reluctant to accept the responsibility. “Thank you. Dismissed.”

Another salute—and another glare for Havoc and Breda—and then the door shuts, and Roy twirls the little cream-colored envelope around his first finger.

“Let me guess,” Breda says. “ _You_ know what it is.”

“Are you suggesting that I can see the future?” Roy asks.

“I think he’s suggesting that you’re the quickest adder in the whole pit of snakes,” Havoc says. At Roy’s slightly startled expression, he waves both hands frantically. “It’s a compliment! I love snakes! Snakes are the best, and I’m so grateful every single day that I get to work for the smartest one!”

“You get to for _now_ ,” Breda says, smirking.

“Any other folksy wisdom to share?” Roy asks. “Or am I allowed to go read this now?”

“Technically,” Falman says, “given that you’re the ranking officer, you’re the one granting allowances, so…”

Roy flashes Riza a beaming grin. “So I can do anything I want?”

Her hand settles on her gun belt. “You can try, sir.”

That’s a cute enough exit cue to throw them off the scent, so he spins on his heel and stalks back into his office, closes the door, and drops into his desk chair.

“I bet it’s from a secret admirer,” Havoc says. “ _Again_.”

“I bet you have work to do,” Fuery says.

“I’m with Sergeant Fuery,” Riza says.

“Why would a secret admirer use General Belmor as a courier?” Falman asks.

“Maybe it _is_ General Belmor,” Breda says.

“Maybe we should all do the jobs that we’re currently on the clock for,” Riza says, “before there are significant consequences.”

Roy can’t help smiling a little at the antics as he opens the envelope, and that’s… good. That feels good. He’s glad that they’re here; he’s glad that they haven’t changed; he’s glad that he still has it in him to be amused at all.

He’s less glad about the symbol sketched out on the matching cream-colored personal stationery.

“Lieutenant,” he calls. “May I borrow you for a minute?”

“Technically,” Falman pipes up, “given that Lieutenant Hawkeye is on the payroll—”

“Yes, sir,” Riza says, stepping in and shutting the door behind her marginally louder than necessary to make the point.

Roy was steeling himself against that contingency so that he wouldn’t flinch at the sound. It almost worked.

Nothing for it but to keep moving: he holds up the sheet. “Do you recognize this?”

Her eyes narrow, and they flick intently over the details, but nothing that looks like comprehension begins to dawn. “Familiar, but I can’t nail it down. Is it Ishvalan?”

“Possibly,” he says. He beckons her closer, setting it down on his desk blotter, and lowers his voice. “Friday night,” he says, “when I was at the opera with Ed—”

She blinks, and a muscle in her jaw tightens ever so slightly, but other than that she doesn’t budge.

He pauses, and then he says, “I admire your restraint.”

“Thank you, sir,” she says. “I appreciate you testing its limits.”

“I wouldn’t believe me either,” he says. “Legend has it that there may have been bribes involved.”

“That,” she says, “I definitely don’t believe. Ed wouldn’t take them, for one thing; and for another, he wouldn’t need them, given that he has a soft spot for you a mile wide.”

It’s Roy’s turn to stare incredulously.

“I _am_ paying attention, sir,” Riza says.

“He’ll be delighted that you think that he has a mile to work with in any direction,” Roy says.

The corners of her mouth twitch upward. “What’s _your_ explanation for the fact that he’s constantly in your office, bringing you food and trying to inject some sunshine personified into your workday?”

“He’s bored,” Roy says.

“Edward doesn’t do ‘bored’,” Riza says. “And you know it.”

“Lieutenant-Colonel Ross has misophonia,” Roy says, “and can’t stand the sound of other people eating, so she sends him up here to bother me instead.”

Riza raises an eyebrow. “That… almost grazes the borderline of plausibility.”

“I strive for excellence,” Roy says.

“That doesn’t,” Riza says. “What happened at the unlikely opera outing?”

So Roy tells her, more or less from the beginning. He leaves out a few of the details—tidbits such as just how gut-wrenchingly distracting Ed’s hair was until they dimmed the lights; just how excruciating it was to watch him lick his left fingertips when the chocolate smudged—but knowing her, she’ll fill the blanks in anyway.

When he’s made it to the end of the sordid little tale, she looks at the wall for several moments, and then she says only:

“Do you trust him? Belmor. Would he tell you the truth?”

She is more than he ever deserved to want. Most of the people he loves and ever has loved are and were and would be.

“I’m not sure yet,” he says, tapping the corner of the envelope on his desk. “But I intend to find out.”

  


* * *

  


He watches the front steps of the Immigrations building from over the top of an Ishvalan phrasebook that he picked up on the way here, and from under the brim of the hat that he keeps in the trunk of the car for this very purpose. Perhaps that’s a poor reflection on his character, even if it’s a positive mark for prescience.

People trickle in and out leading up to five o’clock, and when the hour strikes—accompanied by some delightfully melodramatic bonging from the enormous clock face tucked up into the sharp gable of the white marble façade—a number of them pour out the doors and down the stairs. Alana isn’t among the first rush, or a secondary one. Roy crosses his legs at the knee and skims a few pages, glancing up at intervals, counting out the coins in his pocket around the fabric of the glove nestled between them.

He’s watching for pale blonde hair—which is presumably also what anyone else with the intent of following her would look for, so it’s fortunate that many years of practice have left him with a habit of cataloguing shape and movement without even noticing that he’s doing it. The rather slight woman in a long black coat who saunters casually down the stairs just a few minutes before five thirty, for instance, walks quite like Alana Belmor. She happens to have draped a gray scarf over her head to ward off the chill, which happens to cover her hair entirely, making the color indistinguishable.

She doesn’t glance around herself even once on her way down—just starts off to her left at the foot of the stairs, walking briskly but not quite fast enough to overtake the pair of businessmen a few steps ahead.

As soon as her back is turned, Roy’s up, depositing his tip on the table and then slipping out through the gap in the cute little wrought-iron fencing that encloses this café’s street-side tables. He trails at a moderate pace on the opposite side of the street, keeping his hat low and varying the cadence of his steps so that they won’t mark out a perfect pattern. He may look slightly drunk, rather than slightly caffeinated—especially when he smoothly tosses the book that he was carrying beneath his arm through the half-open window of a black car without watching to see where it lands on the seat—but it’s extremely unlikely that he’ll be recognized in the least-remarkable charcoal-gray suit he’s ever put on. He deliberately selected one at the local tailor that doesn’t fit perfectly and refused to let them improve it; the tie he picked is a dull dark blue. They didn’t understand why he was testing the sound of the heels on the shoes out on the concrete behind the shop, but he supposes that that’s probably a good sign as far as the moral standing of the employees. Maybe he’ll go back.

Alana makes marginally slowing her pace to peer into shop windows look natural, and she goes so far as to pause in front of a toy store and drag her feet in a wistful sort of way—still without losing sight of the pair of men ahead that she’s using as cover.

Roy has lingered far enough behind to see a dark shape emerge from the shadows of an alleyway half a block behind her and materialize into a man.

The way that Roy’s heart flitters in his chest has nothing to do with the speed of his stride: even in the fading light, it’s startlingly evident that the man’s hair is white.

Roy pinpoints the instant that Alana registers the footfalls behind her; her shoulders tighten just slightly, and she reaches up and smoothes the right side of her scarf against her face.

Perhaps the solution is just that she needs to park closer, meters be damned. Maybe they should work on the policies; why shouldn’t employees receive a subsidy so that they can park their cars at a reduced cost much nearer to their places of employment?

Other, of course, than the obvious fact that most of the people in this city can’t afford one vehicle, let alone two, let alone parking fees; such that the citizens who need the financial assistance the most wouldn’t see a penny’s benefit. It’s a good thing that Roy thought about that for more than a fraction of a second before bringing it up in a meeting—less because he’d look a fool than because they might have gone right the hell ahead and implemented a change that would have made things _worse_. Most of the generals would leap aboard the motion if they were eligible to shave some money off of their own household budgets, and the revenue would never make it to the city, and…

And he doubles his pace for the next block, then glances at the road, cuts across it at a run, and jogs up to Alana.

When he takes her elbow, she jumps so hard that he worries for her spine.

He slides his arm through hers, laying his free hand on her forearm in a way that he hopes is calming. “Good evening, Mrs. Belmor. Fancy meeting you here.”

“Good evening, General,” she says, and her eyes tell a _long_ story in a language he doesn’t speak just yet. “What a coincidence this is.”

“How have you been?” he asks, matching her stride.

“Very well,” she says, “thank you. I hope you are also?”

“Splendid,” Roy says. “May I walk you to your car?”

Alana smiles thinly. “Ah. I had wondered. My husband is such a very busy man. I would like that very much, General; thank you.”

“My pleasure,” he says. He lowers his voice. “I suppose I don’t have to explain that anyone with ill intentions towards you would have significantly worse ones reserved for me.”

“I could imagine that that is true,” Alana says, looking levelly at the sidewalk ahead of them. Roy strains to hear the steps behind them—he can’t make out anything distinct enough to be completely sure, but it sounds as though her pursuer may have given up the chase. “I would suppose I don’t have to explain that the situation does not make sense—why a man from Ishval would wish _me_ harm, when I am an advocate for all those who have origins elsewhere.”

“My thoughts precisely,” Roy says.

“Mm,” Alana says. “My car is just up here, on the right. What do you think we should do next?”

“If he doesn’t want to hurt you,” Roy says, “I think we should find out what he _does_ want.”

She glances at him, one eyebrow arching so pointedly that Riza would be very proud. “How do we do this?”

“Tomorrow,” Roy says, “we ask.”

But not tonight.

Tonight, he sees her to her car and waits for her to drive off into the distance, and the street is empty behind him when he turns around. Tonight, he walks back towards the vehicle that he left behind with his ears piqued and his eyes everywhere, but nothing seems out of the ordinary anymore—except for the fact that, by some strange miracle, the book landed rather neatly in the center of his passenger seat.

Tonight, he has the darkening streets, the pale flickers of the streetlamps like will-o’-the-wisps at the edges of his vision, the curb, the house, the path, the alchemy-laced hinges of his front door—

Tonight, he has Ed.

Specifically, he has Ed in his kitchen, or so he guesses from the serenade: a colossal clamor of pots and pans as he unties the relatively quiet dress shoes, hangs the jacket of the uniform that he carried from the car on one of the coathooks, follows it with the coat—

“Something smells good,” he calls.

“It’s the blood of your enemies,” Ed says.

There’s only a touch of acid to the tone of it—just a smear of venom underneath the ordinary banter—but it’s enough to make Roy pause.

He loosens the knot of his tie, squares his shoulders, grapples wth the insistent needling voice in his brain saying _You would know that smell if he was serious; you’re soaked in it_ , and steps into the kitchen.

His heart knows, sometimes: some part of him senses when the twist of concern in the pit of his stomach is founded on fact.

Is he allowed the liberties that he takes on instinct? Is he allowed to cross the kitchen—capitalizing on the moment of surprise when Ed registers his plainclothes, at which point the indescribably capacious brain behind the sharp gold eyes grinds silently as it tries to find an explanation—and come within arm’s reach? Is he allowed to reach out and graze his fingertips across the burgeoning bruise around Ed’s right eye, along the arc of the cut beneath it, over the bridge of Ed’s nose to the raw scrape highlighting the opposite cheekbone—

“What happened?” Roy asks.

“Nothing,” Ed says—as still as a portrait of defiance, but he hasn’t pulled away. “You should see the other guy.”

Roy lowers his hand, which takes more force of will even than he expected. “The other guy must have done something to drive you to it.”

Ed’s eyes narrow, and he tries to smirk, but he can’t muster enough mischief to angle it right. “I gotta have a reason? You think I wouldn’t just pick a fight for fun?”

“No,” Roy says. “Not anymore.”

Ed eyes him for another second, and then the slowly-burning brightness of his gaze rakes down Roy’s whole front instead. They’re too close. They’re much too close, and this is his fault; there’s no one else in the vast world to blame. “Who are you all dressed up for?”

“I have to have a reason to dress up?” Roy asks. “You think I wouldn’t just—”

Ed scowls at him. “You have a reason for every single twitch of a muscle, Mustang. It’s who you are.”

“That is,” Roy says, “a fair accusation.” He pauses. “It’s… a long story.”

Ed gestures to the food on the stove, which, incidentally, still smells almost as tantalizing as he looks. “You got other plans?”

“If you tell me yours,” Roy says, nodding to the marks on his face, “I’ll put up the equivalent exchange.”

Ed glares for a few more seconds, working his jaw, and turns towards the stove.

“It all looks—recent,” Roy says. “Did this just happen?”

“Sort of,” Ed says. Roy has never seen anyone stir pasta aggressively before. “When I was on my way out, there was this new girl at the front desk, and a couple of guys were… giving her a hard time. Y’know. Saying stuff and telling her she had to give them her number or whatever, and—I mean, it’s such a fine damn line between it being playful and it being a threat, but she looked like she would’ve rather been takin’ a bath in an active volcano than sitting there right then, so I told them to knock it off. And like bullies always do, they turned on me, ’cause I’d put myself in the middle of it; and like idiots older than me always do, they didn’t pay any attention to my rank or any of that. But I was _mad_. I just—she looked like she was gonna cry, and I was _pissed_ , and I wanted them to pay for it, and I knew there’d be tons of officers coming through the hallway, so I—let their fucking ringleader land a real good hit.”

He makes a brusque motion towards the ever-brightening shiner.

“He put a good amount of force into it, obviously,” Ed says, “but he was slow as hell.” He draws a breath and lets it out slowly; his cheeks hollow, and then his hair flutters. “And I provoked him. I did it on purpose, and if I hadn’t, he probably wouldn’t’ve gotten mad enough to try to deck me like that. And they all tried to land one on me after that, and this—” The gash, and the scrape. “—is actually from the crap that was on the desk, which I crashed into trying to duck so that they wouldn’t all have been seen beating on me when it came up later on. Because of _course_ there was a colonel just trying to leave and go home and whatever, and we all got rounded up, and when that kid realized who I was, he just—he went _white_ , like a fuckin’ sheet on a clothesline.”

Ed stops, bracing both hands on the counter, lowers his head, and shakes it.

“I’ve never seen anybody go pale that fast,” he says. “I thought he was gonna throw up or pass out or both, maybe. And it’s—I don’t regret defending her. Of course I don’t. But—he could get court-martialed for hitting me. The military might’ve been the only dream he’s ever had, and this is the end of it. Just like that. Over one stupid, shitty mistake. And I just—I don’t know. I feel like shit about it now, and I feel like shit for feeling like shit, because it’s not like I would take it back, but I should’ve done it _different_ , and it’s just—fuck it. You know? If I can have come this far and done this much and still not learned _anything_ , then what’s the point?”

“You did the right thing,” Roy says.

“But I did it _wrong_ ,” Ed says. “So what the fuck difference does it make?”

“All the difference in the world,” Roy says. “They were doing the wrong thing right. What do you think would have happened to her if someone hadn’t stepped in? What do you think would have happened to _them_ if no one had ever told them ‘no’ in a way that they couldn’t ignore?”

He’s not quite brave enough, tonight, to say _Who do you think they might have become?_

“I don’t know,” Ed says, shaking his head hard enough now to send his ponytail flicking back and forth. “That sort of shit’s not supposed to be for me to decide.”

“Most people would have looked away, walked away, and forgotten it,” Roy says. He steps closer. “I’m glad you’re not most people. I know that she is, too.”

“Some days I don’t know,” Ed says. “Some days…”

“I know,” Roy says.

“I know you do,” Ed says, turning enough to look up through his hair at Roy. “That’s why I can tell you this kind of shit.”

The scant space between them seems, for an instant, to shimmer like a heat wave, and Roy—

Knows better. Is better. Has to be.

He steps around Ed to the icebox, fishes out a few choice specimens of its namesake, wraps them in a towel, and holds the frigid little bundle out to Ed. If he did it himself, he’d end up caressing Ed’s jaw under the pretenses of holding it steady. He’s weak. He’s weak for this. Recognizing that is half of overcoming it.

“Why don’t you sit down and let me finish dinner?” he asks.

Ed snatches the icepack out of Roy’s hand and presses it to the afflicted eye socket, scowling again. “If you think I can’t do stuff with one hand, you must be new around here. Who’d you dress up for?”

“Alana Belmor is being followed,” Roy says. “I am attempting to find out why, and by whom.”

The pasta water boils right up to the edge, offering up a few of those soft bubble-popping sounds as it churns against the sides of the pot. Ed manages to glare just as efficiently with one eye as he usually does with two.

“ _Asshole_ ,” he says, with more vehemence than Roy has heard in the word in a while. “You said it was a long story.”

“I abridged it,” Roy says. “There are a number of other details, which I would be delighted to share with you over dinner, if you’ll let me help prepare it.”

“I can do it,” Ed says.

“Of course you can,” Roy says. “But that doesn’t necessarily mean you _should_ , particularly when I’m standing right here with my hands free.”

Ed looks him up and down again, and the glare hasn’t softened in the slightest, but there’s so much else in it—so much that Roy can’t afford to analyze, or guess at, or begin to unravel, without imperiling them both.

“You even look good in a bad suit,” Ed says, which is cause for despair. He adds, “What the hell is wrong with you?”, which at least counts as something like progress towards normalcy.

Roy pulls the knot of his tie fully free but leaves it draped around his neck, which is probably asking for an incident with the stovetop. At least he’s uniquely qualified to put out flames. “That is an excellent question. I’m working on a dissertation.”

“Shut up,” Ed mutters, but then he’s smacking down a cutting board and holding out a knife. “Make yourself useful, would you?”

“Yes, sir,” Roy says.

“Get bent,” Ed says. “And then get the carrots.”

“Right away, sir,” Roy says, shifting everything to an open space and picking up the knife.

Ed continues to glower at him one-eyed. “You are the _worst_ , you know that?”

“Yes,” Roy says, and it takes every remaining iota of his willpower not to lean in and punctuate it by kissing Ed’s cheek just below the graze.

  


* * *

  


He couldn’t get a good look for himself at the suspect’s face—the angles of the street wouldn’t give him a clear sightline—but the evening’s escapade helped to solidify his trust in Alana’s observational skills, so he continues sifting through the dictionary searching for the symbol that she drew.

It is, however, possible—more than just remotely—that this book was made and published by Amestrians who left out words that seemed unimportant to them, regardless of any significance to the Ishvalans themselves. It’s also possible that it was compiled with the best intentions and then censored halfway to oblivion. And—hell. It’s possible that Alana was looking out of the corner of her eye, or that there were more symbols moving down along the side of the man’s face that she couldn’t quite distinguish, which would change the meaning of the one she spotted anyway. Like many of Roy’s gambles, this could be a fool’s errand to add to the file.

“I want cake,” Ed says. He claimed the couch again. Roy let him. It’s more than big enough for two, but the simmering sexual tension makes three, and Roy doesn’t trust the odds as far as which of them would leave. “Do you want cake?”

“No,” Roy says.

“Everybody likes cake,” Ed says.

“Untrue,” Roy says. “And whether or not I like it has little to do with whether I want it at this precise moment in time.”

“Why?” Ed says. “Life’s short, and it sucks, and cake makes it suck a little less.”

“Perhaps you should go for ice cream,” Roy says. “You could get some extra to hold against the bruise.”

“Smartass,” Ed says. “I don’t want to go anywhere. I want cake to materialize out of the ether so that I can eat it.”

“I want clear answers and a brain that functions properly in the present moment,” Roy says. “Or perhaps a time machine. Unfortunately, we can’t always—”

“Shut it,” Ed says. “I’m just makin’ conversation. Why are you working at night again?”

“This isn’t the kind I get paid for,” Roy says. “Besides, it’s probably a good idea to start familiarizing myself with the Ishvalan language if I ever want to have a hope of building a relationship with them long-term. It would be a sign of enormous respect to be able to communicate with them on their terms.”

“It would be a sign of enormous respect to yourself if you took a break every once in a damn while,” Ed says. “Don’t you ever do anything fun?”

“You’ve lived here for two and a half weeks,” Roy says. “What do you think?”

“You might secretly have fun,” Ed says. “Maybe you’re just trying to trick me into believing you’re all business all the time, so that I won’t start nosing in on your secret fun shit.”

Roy looks at him over the top rim of the glasses, which is every bit as satisfying in practice as he always imagined. “I swear to you, on my life, that I do not have, do, or even dream of any secret fun shit.”

“That’s pathetic,” Ed says.

Roy returns his attention to the book. It’s nice, actually, when words still sting a bit. “Tell me about it.”

“That’s why we should go get cake,” Ed says. “That’d be fun.”

“You,” Roy says, “should clean all of your new battle scars with some antiseptic. You promised that you would do it ‘right after dinner’, justifying the delay by saying that you were, and I quote, ‘Teetering on the brink of total fucking starvation’ at that particular point in the evening.”

“It never helps that much,” Ed says. “And it’s just gonna make it hurt more. I can’t believe I don’t even work for you anymore, and you’re still such a _nag_.”

“You and I both know very well,” Roy says, “that it’s ‘Mustang’.”

When Ed laughs like that, with his shoulders shaking and eyes closed and his hair in disarray—

Well. Three’s a crowd.

  


* * *

  


It’s a good thing that Roy’s bedroom stays so dark. It’s a good thing that his eyesight’s compromised. It’s a good thing that the day’s exhaustion weighs so heavily that he’s not sure he could lift his arms if he wanted to, so it’s less dangerous that Ed is close enough to touch.

Ed made a tremendous, overstated fuss when Roy finally dragged him upstairs, cleaned his latest marks of pugilistic pride with some rubbing alcohol, and taped some gauze down over them. He shouldn’t have looked adorable like that—shouldn’t have looked more appealing with every snide remark; more irresistible every time he wrinkled his nose; more delicious wearing each new scowl than he did in the last—

“Hey,” Ed says. “Promise me you’re gonna try to sleep tonight.”

“I always try,” Roy says. “Success is another matter entirely.”

“Promise anyway,” Ed says.

“I promise I will try to sleep,” Roy says, “rather than running outside and rolling all over the lawn, or throwing a raucous party, or sneaking downstairs to catch up on some alchemical journals.”

“That was only once,” Ed says. “And we’re not talking about me.”

“Hence the fact that I didn’t name anyone in particular,” Roy says.

“Hey,” Ed says. “Keep that political rhetoric bullshit out of this bed.”

Roy opens his mouth but can’t muster a single word that doesn’t allude to how that sounded.

It sounded—

Intimate. Familiar.

It sounded _married_.

Ed clears his throat.

“Anyway,” Ed says, and there’s a forced calmness to it that makes it evident that he heard the same thing, “the longer you procrastinate, the harder it’s gonna get.” Roy has no comment on that, either, obviously. “Go the hell to sleep already.”

“I will do my very, very best,” Roy says.

“Shut up,” Ed says.

“I will do my very, very best at that, too,” Roy says.

“You’re terrible,” Ed says. He rolls over, rather loudly. “ _G’night_.”

The dark won’t yield up even the slightest impression of his face or his hair, so Roy has to settle with memory for now.

His memory’s getting to be extremely sharp for details where Ed is concerned. He’s not sure whether to count that as fortunate.

“Goodnight, Ed,” he says.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just when you thought we had reached the LEGAL LIMIT for bed-sharing………
> 
> And enjoy a side of actual plot with your UST. Who wrote this thing? X'D

The next day, five minutes after twelve o’clock, the blond hurricane bane of his existence barrels into his office and holds up a large paper bag.

“Cretan,” he says. “C’mon. Can’t eat all this by myself.”

“Yes, you can,” Roy says.

“Fine,” Ed says. “I definitely could. But it’d probably hurt. Are you coming, or what?”

Roy can feel Riza giving him a knowing look, which he pointedly ignores, the better to steeple his hands together, elbows on his desk. “‘Or what’ sounds so open-ended,” he says. “What are the other options?”

“The other options are that you don’t get food,” Ed says. “And if you ask real nicely, I’ll kick your ass for free.”

Roy pushes his chair back and picks up the Ishvalan dictionary. “You drive a hard bargain.”

“It’s a special rate for idiots,” Ed says.

“Thank you,” Roy says. “People don’t often tell me that I’m special. It’s very gratifying to hear.”

Ed’s muttering takes them all the way out of the office, making it all the easier for Roy to wear a very polished iteration of the smirk until they’re halfway down the hall.

  


* * *

  


“Can I see the note from Belmor again?” Ed asks once he’s licked his fingers almost enough times to drive Roy to desperate measures.

Roy extracts it from where the slip of stationery has been tucked in amongst the later pages of the dictionary and offers it out, idly wishing that he had more of a stomach for the food. A part of him recognizes that it’s good, and that the gesture is kind, and that the sunshine is pleasant. He supposes he should be grateful: a _part_ of him appreciating life is better than nothing.

“Huh,” Ed says, staring at the paper while rummaging through the bag with his free hand. “Maybe it’s not a letter or a word or anything, you know? Like how we’ve got the stupid chimera symbol on all the flags and whatever. Or maybe… you know how fortune-tellers have those cards? When one of them’s upside-down, they mean something different than when it’s the normal way up. What if i—”

The splintering lightning of the thought moves through Roy so fast that he nearly flinches.

“Mirrors,” he says. “If it was put there by someone else, with the intention of him having to read it every time he looks at _himself_ —”

Ed holds the note out to him; Roy takes it and slaps it down on the bench beside himself too swiftly for thank-yous; some optimistic fragment of him tucked a pen into his pocket in case he found something to circle in the book—

The reversed symbol looks even more familiar than the original orientation; his mind races, and his heart keeps pace, and his fingers shake slightly as he pages through the dictionary again. He shouldn’t get his hopes up—what are the odds that he’ll stumble on some sort of brilliant revelation? It might well be yet another dead end; it’s more likely that Ed’s first guess was right, and it’s some pictogram that Amestrians simply don’t register due to a lack of cultural context, and—

There.

He stares wordlessly for several lengthy seconds. It shouldn’t be possible. It shouldn’t be possible for him to be lucky—not now, not here, not given who he is, not given what he _has_. He should have used up his allotment a long damn time ago. He shouldn’t have anything left.

The mirror image of the symbol that Alana Belmor drew looks almost identical to the Ishvalan word for _heretic_.

He isn’t sure that he trusts his voice. He holds the book out to Ed.

“Oh,” Ed breathes, eyes wide. “Oh, _boy_.” He raises his eyebrows, looking up at Roy, and the twist of his smile feels like a spear through the ribcage in the best possible way. “Guess you’ve got a date tonight.”

“Apparently so,” Roy says. “Would you like to come?”

Ed’s eyes light up. Every time Roy thinks that he can’t transcend the limits of human appeal any further— “You sure? I might get in the way.”

“I’m sure,” Roy says.

The grin is even worse. “Famous last words. All right, I’m in.”

  


* * *

  


He asked Ed to meet him at the café shortly—though that wasn’t the word he used—after five, but there’s still no trace of freely-flowing blond hair or even freer-flowing sass by fifteen minutes past the hour. He tries not to let his brain circle around the worst-case scenarios: it’s much more likely that Ed got preoccupied with something at the office, or simply forgot. Not every signal is a red flag, and not every misstep is a disaster. If Roy’s miserable brain won’t help him, he’ll just have to make himself remember. He’ll just have to hold his spirits up by force.

The fact that that sounds like something that Ed would say is more comforting than he’d like to admit.

He scrounged up a book on Ishvalan culture from a different bookstore on his way over this time, but so far it hasn’t yielded up anything illuminating about the mark they’re looking for. As always, he’s not sure whether to suppose that that’s because it’s an obscure or unusual custom, or because the Amestrians who published the work took some creative liberties in the form of massive omissions.

There’s still no sign of Ed at half past the hour, and Roy’s starting to weigh the risk of stepping into the café, calling headquarters, and attempting to determine what might have held him up.

It is, of course, at the precise moment that he uncrosses his legs to stand that he sees Alana emerge from the doors of the Immigrations building across the street.

He gives her several moments to get ahead this time before following at a much more leisurely pace. He’s wearing blue today—but a dark blue, unremarkable after the wool of the uniform, and the slacks and the waistcoat fit him perfectly. He has his shirtsleeves rolled up to the elbows and his hair slicked back, and he’s carrying his jacket slung over one shoulder, freeing one hand to stay in his pocket and toy with the glove folded within.

He couldn’t really describe his pace as anything swifter than a saunter—he hopes with just about all the fervor he’s got left that Alana received his note. Otherwise, this could end… poorly. This could end in blood and tears and no more answers than they set out with, and he can’t, he _cannot_ , gamble with other people’s lives.

There’s time. Even if it starts to go sour, there’s time; he has the fastest hands this country has ever seen, and a faster mind than most. The fact that his instincts tend destructive doesn’t change their usefulness. And at times like this—

Well. The world is dangerous, but he’s the worst thing in it. Nights like tonight, that’s almost as reassuring as it is unkind.

He pretends to be extremely interested in looking at every woman who passes him on the street, going so far as to turn his head for a few particularly lovely specimens—one of them looks back, arches an eyebrow, and gives him a smirk that might qualify as a promise of more, if he had the inclination and the time. As it is, however, he’s using the excuse to look over his shoulder to gauge the opposite side of the street. There is also the small factor that none of the passersby of any character have the advantage of being Ed.

Three blocks down, their suspect emerges from the same alleyway as last time. Roy makes a mental note to retrace those steps and take a look at it once this is over, provided that it doesn’t…

He shouldn’t let the rest of that thought land.

Half a block later, Alana notices her pursuer: the body language gives her away again tonight. With any luck, that’s about to be Roy’s cue.

She hesitates in front of a storefront again, tugging on a lock of her hair as a show of agitation, and then scurries on along the street. She pauses again by the door of a different store, hesitating beneath the arc of the awning and looking down the street as though she’s trying to decide whether to hide or to make a break for it. She’s really quite the actress: she hasn’t oversold any of this, and the man behind her simply keeps walking without ever slowing his pace.

There’s something unsettling about the doggedness of this tail. If this man really wanted to hurt her, but had decided that a long-range weapon in a public place was too risky, he could have identified her car last night and sabotaged it today without ever having to show his face again. If it’s not injury or assassination that he’s looking for, what _does_ he want? No one stalks this extensively, night after night, without a compelling reason, and Alana isn’t a threat to anyone on her own. There has to be an explanation. Deep down—sometimes very deep—all people have motives. And all motives make sense.

Alana takes a sharp left into the next back alley, disappearing into the shadow with a last gleam of pale hair, and her pursuer’s only a dozen steps behind.

Roy finds himself pelting across the two-lane road for the second time in two nights. Belmor is going to owe him a favor the likes of which governmental alliances in the nation-state of Amestris have never _seen_.

He dodges past some businessmen, who slowed their pace to glance over their shoulders at the tall Ishvalan who just ghosted into the alley behind them; Roy doesn’t pause to apologize before darting around the corner so closely that he nearly tears his shirt with the way he scrapes his arm against the brick—

As instructed, Alana stands several feet back in the alley, with one hand braced against the wall and the other raised, clenched so tightly around the handle of a switchblade that her knuckles have gone white.

“Tell me,” she says through gritted teeth, to the man at the other end of the knife, “what you _want_.”

The Ishvalan hears the scuff of Roy’s shoes on the pavement and half-turns, white hair floating almost whimsically around his face as the breeze catches the wisps of it. Red eyes meet Roy’s. Recognition flares in them.

Curious thing: the night’s not cold, but the man wears a scarf—not the traditional pink and black sash repurposed, but a faded brown one. All of the movement has sent it slipping low enough to betray a few slivers of pearlescent scarring on his throat.

No time for that yet.

“Well?” Roy says, keeping his voice low. “The lady asked you a question.”

The thinly-veiled threat behind his voice earns him a tight smile, and then the red eyes flick towards Alana before fixing back on him. The Ishvalan lifts both hands, palms out, fingers spread, and waits for Roy to offer half a nod before reaching very, very slowly into the inner chest lining of the slightly ragged coat he wears.

Roy has finagled his own hand into the glove by now—and curled it into a fist in his pocket as he keeps his face completely neutral, listening to his heartbeat go haywire, eyes trained on the hand emerging from that jacket.

The Ishvalan holds nothing more or less than a piece of paper, folded three times—a letter lacking an envelope.

He holds the unsent missive up for scrutiny, waits for Roy to dip his head permissively again, and then turns and extends it to Alana.

She, too, glances at Roy for an indication of approval before she takes it. He supposes that it’s only fair—between the three of them, he’s the only one with diplomatic negotiation experience; the only one whose entire life’s trajectory has revolved around his capacity to wield immense power over the lives of others; and the one whose plan landed them in this particular configuration of the existing situation—but there’s something surreal about presiding over the proceedings all the same.

Alana pockets her knife to employ both hands unfolding the sheet, which rattles softly as her fingers tremble. It occurs to Roy, in the idle, off-beat, bemused sort of way these things so often do when the adrenaline is pouring through him, that they must all be breathing very quietly indeed if he can hear the movement of the _paper_.

As she reads, her brow furrows slightly, and she presses her lips together. A car rumbles by, exhaust sputtering, and Roy’s left hand, still tucked into his pocket, aches from the pressure of how hard he’s clenching it to keep himself in check.

Alana reaches the bottom of the page, swallows, and looks up at the Ishvalan man. She gestures slightly towards Roy with the paper. “May I?”

At least it’s someone else’s turn to nod, and then she’s sidling carefully around the Ishvalan man towards Roy. Now they have him backed up into the alley—which may not be quite as necessary as originally anticipated, if Roy is gauging Alana’s reactions right.

But risks are risks, and faith is free until it ends in bloodshed. Roy angles his body subtly so that he can step between Alana and the Ishvalan within a matter of instants if it comes to that, and he keeps his left hand in his pocket. With the right, he holds the page up to the light.

Damn. His _glasses_. How do people live like this?

To hell with it: the light’s poor, and his head’s banging, and the epinephrine coursing through him makes him feel like he might just be able to do anything, so he’ll strain his eyes a little further just this once.

The handwriting is, fortunately, printed large and deliberate, carefully penned—as if by one who isn’t particularly confident about the shape of the letters themselves.

_Madam immigrations officer:_

_My name is Lovan. I come from a small region of Ishval which is populated mostly by a religious sect known as the Chosen._

_I was born into the bloodline and so am still included in a group of us who emigrated just before the war. They are angry that so little has changed even many years after the graves of their friends and families have been dug and filled again. They wish to force the government’s hand and also to make a point that cannot be ignored, and they have decided to do this by targeting the immigrations building where you work._

_They believe that this will result in the government realizing that they are important, and a threat, and that as a result the policies will change. I cannot imagine this outcome: I can foresee only violence. I believe they are influenced by someone within the military ranks, but who might encourage them towards this end is still unclear to me. I thought surely they would recognize that this will only hurt the Ishvalan people and our repute in a country where we are very few and very powerless, but they have been hurt too many times, and they are blinded by their need for vengeance. They feel that our identity as a proud and independent people is at stake._

_I heard my family speaking of you once, and then I went to watch you give a speech at an event for the rights of immigrants of all origins. I believe that you care about what is best for us as well as for the nation where we reside. I do not wish to see you or any of the other people of any origin in the building hurt by whatever action my countrymen plan to take. I do not believe that this is Ishvala’s plan for you or for any of us. I hope that perhaps the men in power will listen to you more than they would to me, and that perhaps you can help to save many lives._

_Your servant,_

_Lovan_

Roy looks up slowly from the page.

“Lovan,” he says. “Are you sure?”

One sharp, clear nod.

“This is all you wanted?” Alana asks, waving one hand towards the letter and then using it to push back her hair. “But—why didn’t you just _say_ something? All this time—”

Lovan’s gaze slides sideways to meet Roy’s, and he smiles thinly.

“He can’t,” Roy says. “Can you?” A shake of the head this time, and a prickle walks up Roy’s spine like a long-legged spider. “You… spoke out at the wrong time—or against the wrong people—and they made sure you’d never speak again.” He can feel the horror radiating off of Alana already, so he elects not to point to the tattoo and make the obvious connection aloud. “I’m—sorry. For whatever that’s worth, which I don’t imagine is a lot. And I’m grateful that you came here even knowing what was at stake.”

Lovan smiles again, more warmly, so Roy squares his shoulders and draws a breath.

This isn’t the same. This isn’t the last time. If he keeps repeating it to himself, his heartbeat will have to settle, and his fingers will eventually uncurl.

“Do they have a timeline?” Roy asks. Another nod. “Do you know what it is?” And another, though more tentative. “Even a guess would be enough to go on at this stage,” Roy says. “I—ah. Here, hold on.”

He passes the letter back to Alana, who takes it, looking at him like he’s something strange—like he’s something foreign that ought to have been familiar. Likely this is the first impossible situation that she’s found herself in the epicenter of, and watching someone else accept it without question is unnerving indeed.

He extracts one of the pieces of chalk that he keeps wrapped in wax paper in the breast pocket of all of his shirts, tilting his head to indicate the open expanse of brick wall behind them. He can alchemize them clean again later with a clap of the hands, after all. “Will this work?”

Lovan hesitates, assesses the brick, and then, slowly, nods again.

“If you help us with this,” Roy says, extending his hand with the chalk, “I can guarantee you amnesty.”

There’s a remarkable sort of old, settled sadness in Lovan’s eyes. How many years has he been alone? How long has it been since he could trust anything that sounded like a promise, dressed up nice?

He plucks the chalk out from between Roy’s fingertips, nods one more time, and turns to start scraping out letters on the wall.

Roy’s heart won’t sink any lower than his throat, and his left hand, still clenched tightly in his pocket, has begun to throb.

This isn’t the same.

Just this once, he did the right thing in time to make a difference.

  


* * *

  


He has somehow forgotten, by the time he sees Lovan off down yet another dark alley, escorts Alana to her car, and heads for home. Or—perhaps more likely—he’s reached his capacity for concern. His brain has shut off supplying intellect to any problems beyond the most prominent one.

Halfway to the house, he remembers. When he parks, the first thing he notices is that the front windows are dark.

He can’t panic. He can’t let himself. There are a hundred-thousand plausible and perfectly ordinary explanations. Ed had no way of knowing precisely where the night’s adventure would end: the single most probable scenario is that he arrived at the café moments after Roy left it, having been held up with some terribly dull minor inconvenience at Command; and then, not knowing when Roy would be due to return, he went back to his apartment to feed the cats.

Simple. Harmless. Fine.

Roy clings to the thought like a life raft in a tempest as he drags himself up the walk, eyes trained on the dark behind the windows, and forces himself to draw slow deep breaths. It’s fine. Rationally, he knows it’s fine; it’s just his liar of a brain desperately trying to convince him of something different. He should be affronted that it thinks that he’s stupid enough to fall for that kind of thing.

He just has to hold it together—just has to grasp it so tightly the the jagged edges of the pieces of him will hold water. Just has to clasp his hands so firmly that the sand won’t slip between his fingers.

There will be an explanation. It will be simple. He can’t let his head start to spiral; can’t let his blood start to race—

He fumbles his keys, snatching them the instant before they jitter out of his palm and make a dive for the pavement of the step. He catches the curse behind his teeth even more narrowly, and he closes his eyes, clutches the keys, and makes himself _breathe_ for three long seconds before he lets himself open the door.

No lights. No movement. No Ed.

But it is, evidently, a night for notes—one resides on a sheet of pale paper taped to the side of the end table in the hall, where he couldn’t miss it on his way to the phone to place a faux-casual call to Lieutenant-Colonel Ross.

 _Hi_ , it reads. _Went to my & Al’s place. Give me a call when you get in._ Then, much lower, as an after-thought: _Please_.

Ed scrawled the number underneath, as if Roy could possibly not have it committed to memory by now.

He orders himself to take a moment to hang up his coat and relax his shoulders before he allows himself to step up to the phone, although he can’t quite convince himself to remove his shoes. Some subtle whisper of an instinct urges him to keep them on—as though he might need them. As though he might be leaving again.

He dials. He waits. The line rings once, and then again.

And then it clicks.

“Hey,” Ed says.

The single syllable carries a depth of weariness that makes Roy’s chest seize tighter—much less than, say, no answer at all would have done, but a far cry yet from a negligible reaction.

“It sounds like a ‘good evening’ would be out of place,” Roy says.

The dry laugh does not inspire newfound heights of optimism. “You could say that. How’d—how’d everything go?”

“It’s another long story,” Roy says. “And not as important yet as whether you’re all right.”

“Yeah,” Ed says. He exhales it, halfway to a sigh, and this word manages to ring with more exhaustion even than the last one. “It… I guess the guy I picked a fight with yesterday’s got a lot of friends. When I left to try to go meet up with you, they all came after me.”

The wallpaper goes out of focus as Roy’s beleaguered eyes finally give up for the night. “They—what? You—are you—”

“I’m fine,” Ed says. “They didn’t have any fucking clue who they were dealing with—didn’t even know I could do alchemy, which means they didn’t do _any_ damn homework. They got me cornered, ’cause I was distracted trying to remember the fastest way to the Immigrations building, since I knew I was already gonna be late, but they couldn’t even touch me. It was just that there were—a lot of ’em. And it—really caught me off-guard, I guess. You just—you sort of—get used to stuff. Get used to the way things are hard, and the kind of power you have to deal with it. And this is different than what I’ve been settled in, or… something. I don’t know. Fucked my head up a little, I guess. Which is stupid. But it—anyway. I just took a quick pillar made out of pavement up to the roof of a building and got the fuck out of there before they could do anything or accuse me of hurting anybody. But then I got to thinking that if they’d been following me, maybe they’d figured out where I live, and maybe they’d break in and do something to the cats or something. They don’t… they don’t really seem like the type who’d be above it. So I just… yeah. Anyway. Figure I can stand to spend a night here in any case. The cats seem happy about it, in an evil sort of way.”

“Is there any sign that he and his friends have been there?” Roy asks. “Did you—”

“Everything’s locked as tight as it’ll go,” Ed says. “And I’ve got all the damn lights on. The cats are just doing that cold-shoulder followed by getting their faces all over my ankles thing that they do when they’re mad at me but also kinda missed me. And I think I scared the hell out of those fuckers with the alchemy thing, so at least there’s that. Probably they won’t want to tangle with me again any time soon, but it just—”

“Have you had anything to eat?” Roy asks.

“Nah,” Ed says. “Cats did, though. Little bastards. Yeah, _you_. You’re a parasitic fuzzball. Yes, you _are_.”

The combination of the sudden, involuntary smile with the way that Roy has had his jaw clenched makes his cheeks ache. “Can I bring you something?”

The length of the silence throws him for a moment—and isn’t that just the way it goes, with Ed? Ed has made it his personal trademark never to deliver anything like what Roy has the foolish audacity to expect. Roy used to think that he took pride in it, but these days it seems like it comes as a surprise to both of them—like Ed doesn’t even realize what he does.

“I mean,” Ed says, “I don’t wanna put you out. You—I mean, shit, you had a rough night, too. Probably a rougher day before it. It’s okay. Don’t worry about it. Me. Don’t worry about me.”

“I know you’re the one famous for refusing to do what you’re told,” Roy says, as cheerfully as he can manage, “but I’ve always had a rebellious streak of my own, you know.”

“Gee, really?” Ed asks. “The whole bloodless coup thing totally didn’t tip me off. Or you _talking_ about it for, like, two years beforehand. Nah, never would’ve taken you for the renegade type.”

“Oh, good,” Roy says. “No one suspects a thing. I really wouldn’t mind, you know.”

Silence again. The gaps in the banter come so suddenly—like inkblots, stark and disruptive and unanticipated, bleeding down the page. They feel so much hollower than he would have thought possible.

“Only if it’s what you want,” Ed says. “I mean—your nights’re precious. The time you get away from that place, where you’re not accountable to anybody—that’s… important. The last thing I want to do is mess with it. But if—you know. If—you don’t want to be… at home, then… obviously you’re welcome here.”

It probably is obvious, to Ed. It’s not how the rest of the world operates, but it’s always been a fundamental part of who he is.

“What do _you_ want?” Roy asks.

“I just—don’t—” Ed breathes out shakily. It sounds like the syllables are fighting him all the way up his throat, and Roy sympathizes so viscerally that his stomach twists with it. “I don’t—want—to be alone right now. Which is stupid. And I know it’s stupid, but sometimes stupid shit’s still true.”

“That is the least-stupid thing I’ve heard in a long time,” Roy says, as softly as he dares.

“Then you haven’t been listening to much of anything,” Ed says. “Including my dumb ass, apparently.”

“Shame on me,” Roy says. “I’ll be there in… about an hour? Leaving time for takeout, unless you’d desperately like to cook.”

“I’d desperately like to eat,” Ed says. “The details don’t matter. You sure?”

“Yes,” Roy says.

“You know you can—” Ed clears his throat. “You can… stay, if you want. Stay the night or whatever. If it’d help. I’m not gonna be offended or anything if you’d rather not.”

Roy listens to his heartbeat for two full seconds as a way of attempting to gauge whether or not he’s hallucinating before he answers. “Why don’t we cross that bridge when we come to it?”

“Because if you end up crossing that bridge without your toothbrush,” Ed says, “you’re gonna complain.”

Roy winces. “I—well.”

“Just bring your shit,” Ed says. “If you don’t end up wanting to stay, you can take it back again when you leave. Simple.”

Maybe that’s part of what drags Roy in every time, like a gnat knowing full well that he should fear the flame—things _are_ simpler with Ed. The world fits better around his shape. Part of that’s the way he sees it; part of it’s just who he _is_ : he’s been bending the universe around himself without ever second-guessing—sometimes without even noticing—since he was a child. The contours of reality have accepted their fate by now. They’ve realized that they don’t have much of a choice.

Neither does Roy.

“If you insist,” he says.

“Don’t make this my fault,” Ed says. “I mean—it is, sort of. I guess. But that part’s not. Or it is, but I didn’t _insist_. There was no _insisting_.”

“If you insist,” Roy says.

“Asshole,” Ed says.

“That’s starting to sound like an endearment,” Roy says.

He can hear the smirk. “When did I say it wasn’t?”

Roy—

Listens for two more heartbeats. Swallows. Runs his tongue across his upper lip and then bites the lower one, doing his absolute damnedest to conjure something that a clever man might say.

The deepest wells of his wit yield nothing.

“Ah,” he says. At least filler is a start. “I—”

“Just get some good food,” Ed says. “I’m really hungry.”

“You say that as though it’s unusual,” Roy says.

“No,” Ed says. “I say it as though it’s fact. ’Cause it is. I’ll see you soon if the cats don’t shred me first.”

“Wonderful,” Roy says.

“Do you even listen when I talk?” Ed asks.

“Of course,” Roy says. “At least eighty percent of the time. That’s a very high proportion compared to the average person. You should be flattered.”

“You should get fucked,” Ed says. “But first, bring food.”

“I’ll do my best,” Roy says.

  


* * *

  


“Jeez,” Ed’s saying as he opens the door. “It sure as hell took you l— _what is that_?”

Roy clutches the bag to his chest as he squeezes through the small gap between the door and the doorframe, which is presumably narrow enough to deter the cats, at least, whether or not it could contain them. He then regrets the clutching, since the bag in question is probably oozing grease, and this is one of his work shirts.

“It’s exactly what it smells like,” he says.

“It’s weird that you like pub food,” Ed says. “Sit your ass down. Did you get napkins? ’Cause we’re gonna need ’em.”

“No,” Roy says. “I’m hoping you can provide. Why is it weird? I more or less grew up in a bar. Does it seem like it’s beneath my dignity?”

“Beneath the dignity you pretend like you have, I guess,” Ed says, slinging a few plates onto the table so that Roy can upend the bag and distribute its contents. “Don’t let the cats on the table; I dunno if they can eat this stuff. Al has the list memorized, so I could never get him to write it down. I always forget about the bar thing.”

“It’s to my advantage if very few people know,” Roy says, sitting down, “and the ones who know don’t believe it.”

Ed hurls a wad of paper towels in his direction, which evidently qualifies as close-enough-to-napkins in this establishment. Roy supposes that he and his inability to stock his own larder when living unsupervised can’t really talk. “It’s good to have a couple of secrets,” Ed says. “Adds to the mystique.”

Roy’s body wants to cram a fistful of fries into his mouth, but at the moment, his brain’s compulsions stay just a fraction stronger: he folds his hands, rests his chin on them, and raises his eyebrows as Ed returns to the table, in order to slam two glasses of water down on the tabletop while Roy sits here posing. “Do I have a mystique? How delightful. I didn’t realize.”

“Bullshit you didn’t,” Ed says, dropping into his chair, but the burgeoning traces of pink in his cheeks belie that it’s affected him. “You know exactly what you’ve got, and exactly what you do, and exactly how much you can twist other people around with it. Can we stop talking about you and _eat_ already?”

Roy has received such an incomparable gift that he can’t imagine argument; he’s too busy basking in the glow. Registering a glow to bask in would qualify as enough of a blessing on its own, these days.

“Of course,” he says. He surfaces from the basking enough to push the foil-wrapped hamburger marked with an _X_ across the table. “This is yours. I asked them to add as many hot peppers as are legally permissible.”

“You’re the fucking best,” Ed says—which changes the glow into a directed sunbeam pouring through a vast magnifying glass, which singes Roy very badly before he can muster the dexterity to dodge. “How’d you know?”

“Lucky guess,” Roy says, which is much less likely to end in murder than _This particular form of macho masochism had your name all over it in bright red pen, my dear_. “You know what’s best for cooling spice, though, don’t you?”

“If it starts with ‘M’ and ends with me throwing fries at you for the rest of my natural life,” Ed says, “yes.”

“All right, then,” Roy says.

Ed’s already tearing into the foil. “‘All right’ is _right_.”

  


* * *

  


“Ow,” Ed says, collapsing onto the couch. Nearly instantaneously, his little pale-furred doppelgänger streaks across the floor, hops up onto the cushions, and curls herself on top of his right thigh. Without opening his eyes, he reaches across himself so that he can rub his left thumb behind one of the tiny ears.

“Ate too much?” Roy asks. He would like the record to show—preferably in a large-type, boldface font, possibly in red or orange—that he’s standing a safe distance away, with the coffee table and its book towers in between them.

“Just the right amount,” Ed says. “I’m suffering, but I’m not dead. That’s perfect. Why are you—” He makes a valiant effort to shift, groans loudly, and somehow manages to drag himself upright without upsetting the position of the cat. “Sit your ass down and stay a while. Eastern hospitality rules.”

Roy doesn’t budge. “I thought you didn’t want me to say ‘If you insist’.”

“I don’t,” Ed says. “I’m not insisting. Society is.” His eyes narrow slightly, and they flick up and then back down, lingering on Roy’s shoulders, and then at his waist, and at his hips, and… this would be a fine time to run. Running is the only rational response, and yet Roy’s feet won’t move; they’re rooted to the floor, and his heartbeat ricochets inside his head. “Y’know, it’s weird—I think I’ve seen you more in real person clothes lately than I have in the stupid uniform.”

“Why is that weird?” Roy asks. Evidently even certain doom can’t stop him from being a contrary bastard at the best of times.

“Because it proves that you’re a real person,” Ed says.

Roy isn’t quite sure whether to grin roguishly or to sputter. Fortunately, years of self-imposed training keep his face neutral instead of landing him with an ungodly combination of the two. “Was that… in doubt?”

“You know what I _mean_ ,” Ed says. “Shut up. You look good. Shut _up_. Are you gonna sit down? You’re making me nervous.”

A barrage of Elric thoughts might unsettle a less-acclimated acquaintance—or a generally less-bastardly human being—but Roy rather literally takes it in stride, specifically by directing his over to the couch to follow the instruction. He can generate a few arguments against it, but none of them are compelling enough to quell the yearning in him just to be _close_.

Mostly it’s Ed, of course: Ed’s ineluctable sunspot magnetism dragging Roy in, pulling on the hot lead weight growing ever heavier in the pit of his stomach.

But there’s a bit of it that’s just him—a bit that’s pure loneliness. He just wants to be near someone.

He reaches for another clever sally, but Ed has a way of exhausting his reserves, and his knuckles scrape the walls of the well to no avail.

“ _Hey_ ,” Ed says before the silence can sink into awkwardness—although this particular interjection is aimed at the sleek calico feline that just leapt up onto the couch cushion and started for Roy’s lap, rather than at Roy himself. “Don’t you dare get your dumb fur all over his nice pants,” Ed is saying, scooping the cat up by the midsection with his left hand and attempting to wrangle it away. “You are not authorized to invade his space.”

“It’s really all right,” Roy says. “I like cats.”

Ed raises an eyebrow at him and then carefully releases the captive, who rolls her shoulders and glares at her erstwhile gatekeeper before padding up to Roy to sniff at his knee expectantly. “Be that way. When you get her full weight on one paw in places you _really_ don’t want her walking, you’ve got nobody else to blame.”

Edward Elric has committed some portion of that beautiful, formidable, incomparable brain to thinking about the welfare of Roy’s dick.

Interesting.

Roy holds his hand out, palm down and fingers loosely curled, for the cat to nose at, waiting for her to give him what seems to be a permissive look before he scratches gently beneath her chin. “I think I’ll take my chances.”

“Your hairball-filled funeral,” Ed says. “So what happened at the party I missed tonight?”

“Alana’s tail informed us that a reactionary religious faction from Ishval, likely coached by someone from within the military, is planning to inflict a great deal of damage on the Immigrations building to make a political point,” Roy says, stroking at the soft fur behind the ears of the cat that selected him. “We’re waiting for confirmation on a date, but it may well be later this week.”

Is it Ed’s hard-won maturity that maintains his calm, or did all of the sick training under Roy’s command finally desensitize him to the prospect of innocents in peril? “Huh. You know how they’re planning on going about it?”

“I’m made to understand they have quite a lot in the way of firearms,” Roy says, “and a fair number of explosives.”

Ed nods idly, stretching his arm over the back of the couch—the arm closer to Roy, that is, which happens to be the left. Maggie, still curled in Ed’s lap, pushes her head at his metal hand and then looks affronted when she discovers her mistake. “Makes sense. If they want people to notice, they have to go all the way with the spectacle. And the smoke. So ideally, when you take ’em out, you’re going to want to do it as quietly as you can—depriving them of the attention of a big showdown will discourage anybody who’s thinking about trying the same thing next time.” He glances sideways at Roy, beginning to frown. “Go ahead and say whatever you gotta say about how rich it is that _I’m_ giving advice on how to prevent people from blowing up buildings to get press.”

“You never did it for the press,” Roy says. “You did it for the sheer joy of destabilizing the establishment.”

“You say that like it’s a bad thing,” Ed says. “The establishment needs a swift kick in the ass; the least I can do is destabilize it a little bit.”

The worst part is that he makes a good point.

“And you were a maestro at it from start to finish,” Roy says. “Have you ever considered teaching classes?”

“It’s a talent you gotta be born with,” Ed says. “Can’t teach it. And even if I could, I wouldn’t want to share. Weren’t we talking about something that mattered?”

None of it matters, in the end. None of it will weather the ravages of time. None of it will change the course of the world; none of it will un-write the wrongs and save lives that never should have been taken. They’re a raindrop in the ocean at the best of times, and the saline will swallow them whole.

“I’ll let you know what I find out as far as when it’s likely to happen,” Roy says. “I think you’re right that the smaller we can keep the defensive party, the better. We could certainly use your… expertise.”

“Who’s ‘we’ if I’m not there?” Ed asks.

Roy opens his mouth.

He shuts it again.

“No comment,” he says.

“You talking nonsense accidentally instead of on purpose is probably a sign that we should go to bed,” Ed says.

Ah, yes: the moment Roy’s been waiting for on poisoned tenterhooks.

“I suppose you’re right,” he says. “We have to be up bright and early to destabilize the establishment a bit more thoroughly tomorrow, after all.”

“That’s the spirit,” Ed says. He gathers Maggie into his left arm and levers himself up off of the couch with the right. “C’mon. I even changed the sheets while I was waiting for you. Al would have a heart attack.”

The hooks nip into Roy’s skin, and then they tilt, and the barbed tips of them sink in deep.

Roy cannot imagine that Ed has a bed of a comparable width to his—not in an apartment of this size; not when he and Al furnished it while they were still paying rent and hospital bills out of a single salary. Not when Ed was probably never intending to share it with anyone, let alone with _him_.

He shifts, and the cat occupying his lap takes the hint—after a long stretch of her back, a brief knead of Roy’s thigh that makes him grit his teeth, and a toss of her head, she saunters over to the cushion that Ed just vacated and curls up in the warm spot he left.

Roy brushes at the cat fur on his slacks as he follows Ed down the hall, towards what cannot be anything other than the end of him.

“You bring your toothbrush like I told you?” Ed asks.

“Yes,” Roy says.

Ed shoves a door open partway down the hall, and Roy holds his breath as he summons the will to look inside.

As expected, it’s a bedroom. As expected, Ed’s comforter is black with a red border, although Roy registers vague relief that it doesn’t appear to boast a motif of either bleeding knives or flaming skulls.

There isn’t much in the way of other furnishings—the first thing that catches Roy’s eye is the tall, dark-wooded wardrobe with mirrors on the doors, the clawed feet and ornate molding of which ride the line between lavish and tacky with a reckless panache that is very, very Ed. There are more bookshelves, of course: the one crammed into the corner is decorated with knickknacks at intervals; a second, smaller one has a selection of items on top, including a tragic gold and black mantel clock with a little pendulum, an assortment of small rocks, two framed photographs that he can’t quite make out, and a few cans of what Roy suspects is machine oil, though he can’t read the label from here anymore.

“You coming?” Ed asks from right beside his shoulder, and Roy startles so hard that he almost tweaks his neck. Ed’s left hand rises in between them and stops inches short of resting on his arm, which— “Sorry.” Ed drops his hand again as if it never moved and nods at the room. “It’s weird having… stuff. We really didn’t for a long time. I’m not completely sure if I like it yet.”

“You don’t have to decide,” Roy says. “Not now, and likely not ever.”

“Yeah,” Ed says. “But you have to brush your damn teeth, or Al’s gonna kill us both.”

Roy fights a smile, but the smile wins. “Aren’t hosts supposed to be gracious?”

Ed turns on his heel and saunters down the hall. “Aren’t you supposed to be smart?”

Is it really any wonder that Roy can’t resist him?

  


* * *

  


The walls of Ed’s bedroom are not especially remarkable, even upon intense observation. Roy knows this because he’s been staring almost unblinkingly at the one on the inner side of Ed’s bed.

Because of course Ed remembered that he prefers the side further from the door. Because of course Ed glared at him until he climbed in first. Because of course the bed is very, very small, and he can feel every single shift of Ed’s beautiful muscles as the mattress moves.

“Comfy?” Ed asks.

“In a manner of speaking,” Roy says.

“So no,” Ed says.

“I didn’t say that,” Roy says.

“Yeah, you did,” Ed says. “Just don’t sleep on your back. Or your front. Don’t be flat. You’ll wake up struggling to breathe and find a stupid cat on your chest.”

Roy frowns at the wall. The wall is not especially responsive. “You closed the door.”

“Of course I did,” Ed says. “You think that can stop a cat that wants to sit on somebody? You couldn’t put these assholes on an island prison a thousand miles away and expect to wake up catless.”

“I admire their tenacity,” Roy says.

“You can go right ahead and keep on admiring it until they make your lungs collapse,” Ed says.

Most of Roy’s internal organs already feel like they’re imploding when he lies in such close proximity to Ed, in such a torturous context—what’s one more?

“I suspect that you may be exaggerating slightly,” he says.

“I suspect that you may not know what you’re talking about,” Ed says.

“I suspect that you wouldn’t continue to feed them, wait on them, and attend to their every need if they didn’t have a few redemptive features,” Roy says.

“I suspect that you don’t understand that I do all that shit out of a rationalfear of evil feline reprisal,” Ed says. “I also suspect that this isn’t helping you calm down so you can go the hell to sleep and get up all bright and fresh for another stupid day tomorrow.”

“What a charming perspective,” Roy says. He means it, in its way—it is so utterly, uniquely Ed to cram all of those sentiments into a single breath.

“Yeah, that’s what they call me,” Ed says. “The Charm Alchemist. Mister Fucking Charisma.”

“I’ll have some business cards made for you,” Roy says.

“Fuck that,” Ed says. “I want an engraved plaque for the wall. And a certificate all in nice calligraphy, with one of those little wax seals with the ribbon. And a parade.”

“I’ll get right on it,” Roy says.

“Not until you get some sleep, you won’t,” Ed says.

“I’ll dream of getting right on it,” Roy says.

“I can live with that,” Ed says. “G’night, asshole.”

It sounds so normal now that he can’t even muster up any bewilderment: “Goodnight, Ed.”

  


* * *

  


He does not wake with a cat on his chest.

He wakes to the thickest sort of darkness, with his heart in his throat and his pulse in his ears and his mouth full of someone else’s scream—not even this is his; he doesn’t even deserve to claim his own voice; nothing of him belongs to the man he was, once, before the blood of others soaked through his skin and remade him from the inside out—

There isn’t space to sit up—there’s barely space to breathe; merely rolling partway, trying to orient himself and grapple for his bearings, made the bed creak, and he can hear the sharp edge of panic on every inhale, like the scrape of sandpaper on stone.

He can’t wake Ed. They both have to work tomorrow; they both have to walk through their normal lives as though everything could _possibly_ be all right. Ed works too hard as it is, runs himself ragged, reaches out to others even when he’s stretched himself so thin trying to do the right thing that there’s hardly any of him left. The last thing Ed needs—

“You okay?” the all-too-familiar voice mumbles. The sheets rustle; a shape in the dark twists towards him, and he recoils against the wall even though he _knows_ —

“Fine,” he says. It sounds faint and fragile even to his own ears, but the effort has to count for something.

“Save the bad lies for the generals,” Ed says. “Roy—”

Roy intuits more than sees Ed moving towards him, and he sits up, pulling his knees up to his chest, fighting to breathe slowly and evenly to iron the miserable tremors out of his voice. He grinds the heels of both hands against his eyes for a few second before he wraps his arms around his knees.

“It’s not a lie,” he says. “I’m—”

“Bullshit,” Ed says. “You’re either lying, or you’re ripping up the dictionary just for fun, and I know you’ve got more respect for books than that. And words. So—just—it’s _okay_. Fuck. You can be—you can just—I get it. I mean, I don’t get it, not the whole way, but—I get what it feels like. I get how fucking hard it is to have to let go of the idea that you’re in control of your own life. That you’re even in control of _yourself_. And I get how fucking hard it is to have to expose that to somebody in the most vulnerable way possible and just—hope they don’t tear your throat out. But I won’t, Roy. Okay? I won’t. I’ve got you. I’ve got your back.”

“You have enough to deal with,” Roy says. “Babysitting me is not part of your job descr—”

“It’s part of being your fucking friend,” Ed says. “That’s what caring about people _means_ , dumbass.”

 _Friend_ is an awful word—a tantalizing word, singeingly close but not aflame.

It is also, undeniably, the safest possible choice for either of them.

Ed can’t be blamed for misinterpreting the silence. “Okay, well—okay. My comforting-people skills need work. Duly noted or whatever. You know what I meant.”

“I did,” Roy says, as softly as he dares. “And I… appreciate it. I mean that sincerely. But—”

“But nothing,” Ed says. “What can I get you? Do you want a glass of water or something?”

“I want you to be able to go back to sleep,” Roy says. “It’s—”

“It’s not fine,” Ed says. “Are you sure?”

Roy closes his eyes—not that it matters, in a room as dim as this—and draws a breath. “Yes. Thank y—”

“Lie down,” Ed says. “Shut your eyes. Take a couple of deep breaths. We’re gonna get through this.”

A part of Roy wants to fight it—wants to snarl at the very implication that Ed is somehow more qualified to assess and assuage his problems than he is—and the surge of anger that rises in him tastes like bile and scalds his throat.

He’s better than this.

He’s better than the impulse to lash out whenever Ed sees him vulnerable.

And that’s the entire conversation, isn’t it? They both know that Ed won’t take advantage. Roy just has to make himself remember—has to make himself believe it.

Ed’s intentions are always kind. That’s most of what makes him so damn important, and a lot of what makes him so damn easy to love. Even when he uses the metal hand and grips too tight, because he can’t quite feel how much pressure he’s exerting, it’s the act of reaching out that matters, and he always seeks to _give_.

Roy listens to his own heartbeat for a few more seconds, and then, careful not to shift too much closer to Ed’s side of the bed, he follows the instructions, simplistic as they are.

They don’t work instantaneously, of course, but he knows very well that he doesn’t deserve any miracles.

“Have you considered a side career as a hypnotist?” Roy asks.

“No,” Ed says. “Although I hear there’s actually some scientific basis for that stuff, but it depends on the way a person’s brain is rigged up, or something. So I want to call it bullshit, but I can’t, or at least not until I prove for myself that it’s bullshit. Is this what you wanna talk about?”

“I don’t want to talk about anything,” Roy says. “I want you to go back to sleep.”

“I want _you_ to go back to sleep,” Ed says. “Eyes closed?”

They weren’t—he has a tendency to open them when he’s speaking; there must be some sort of psychological compulsion—but they are now. “Yes.”

“Head cleared of all the bad stuff?”

“That’s very funny.”

“You have to _try_ ,” Ed says. “It doesn’t just happen. That’s the part that sucks. It’s like a railroad switch you have to force to change by hand. And then half the time, the train stops running, so you have to get out and push. And it’s hard. It’s really, really hard. But if you want to get to that destination, it’s the only choice you’ve got.”

Roy opens his mouth. In the nick of time, it occurs to him that saying _Can’t I just lie down on the tracks and wait for death?_ is not likely to send this conversation in the direction he prefers.

“I know,” he says instead, which is true and significantly less objectionable.

“I know you know,” Ed says. “But knowing it and internalizing it are two different things, and that’s the big problem. And—I mean—for you… you have to decide it’s worth it. You have to decide _you’re_ worth it. I think you think that what you’ve done invalidates any right you ever had to hope for something better than what you’ve got. And as long as that’s your mindset—”

“We’ve had this conversation,” Roy says.

“I know,” Ed says. “But apparently we have to have it again.”

Roy holds a hand over his eyes, for all of the good that will do. “We really don’t.”

“I guess we don’t right now,” Ed says. “Rain check, though. Implication about you and rain completely intended.”

“Your generosity never fails to inspire,” Roy says.

“I get that a lot,” Ed says. “And by ‘a lot’, I mean ‘never’.”

“I suspected,” Roy says.

“I suspect that you should stop talking and go to sleep,” Ed says.

“I suspected that you would say that,” Roy says.

A whisper of sheets is his only warning before Ed shoves him—mercifully, with the hand not made of metal; less-mercifully, with enough force that Roy’s forehead nearly kisses the wall regardless.

“Sleep,” Ed says. “At least _try_.”

“All right,” Roy says. “If it will stave off further overtures of viol—”

“ _Sleep_ ,” Ed says.

“Goodnight, then,” Roy says.

Ed makes a point of rolling over and fussing with the covers. “Yeah, yeah, yeah.”

  


* * *

  


Morning comes much too soon, and much too brightly. The roof of Roy’s mouth feels like cotton; and his eyes feel gritty and puffy at intervals as he squints against the light; and his skin feels clammy and too-tight everywhere, but particularly on his face.

But it’s better than it was before he started rooming with Ed—the quality of the sleep, and the amount, and the aftermath. He should remember that. He should endeavor to muster some gratitude.

“’Mornin’, asshole,” Ed mumbles as he moves. “Can’t wait for the fuckin’ alarm, can you? Some kinda rebel.”

His accent comes through so much stronger before he’s woken enough to wrangle it under control. The soft light of early morning filters through the blinds in faint pale lines, painting stripes of white across him, and the ones that hit his hair light it up in burning gold. Roy wants to pin him to the pillow and kiss him until he’s gasping for air, morning breath be damned, _consequences_ be damned more still—

The blood beats in him too quick and too hot, drowning the cold better judgment in his fog-dampened brain, and he moves to sit up, starting to twist his torso towards Ed, giving in to the ferocious electricity humming in between them, and—

Realizes that there is a cat curled up on top of his feet.

“Oh,” he says, admittedly a bit stupidly.

Ed cracks an eye open, peering through a net of mussed gold hair to identify the problem. “Told you so.”

“From the direness of your warnings,” Roy says, “I’d assumed their plans were slightly more diabolical than warming up my extremities. Attempts to kill me, perhaps.”

“Too early,” Ed mumbles, possibly in response to Roy’s vocabulary. “And—how d’you know they’re not? He’s cuttin’ off the circulation to your feet so you get gangrene, and they have to amputate, and then it gets infected. Cats play the long game.”

Roy looks at him.

Ed looks back.

“Good morning to you, too,” Roy says.

Ed snickers and buries his face in the pillow, but not before Roy has a chance to swoon, like a fool, over the way his eyes crinkle up at the corners when he grins.

  


* * *

  


Roy slows his walk to a saunter as he moves through the populated halls, but when he nears the office, and there’s no one in sight, he lets himself stride swiftly again to cover the last of the distance.

“Good morning,” he says as he shoulders his way in—only after scanning the room to check for interlopers who oughtn’t be privy to his regular greetings, of course. “Sorry I’m late; I had to make a stop at the city planning office and intimidate several civil servants.”

“Sounds like fun,” Breda says, leaning forward expectantly, eyes fixed on the rolled blueprints under Roy’s arm.

Roy shuffles them a bit. “I’m not sure that’s the word I would have chosen,” he says, instead of _I also had to drop Ed off here first, and between that and the Immigrations building, the one city ordinance we actually_ are _hurting for is something about this miserable parking situation_. “But I suppose it was productive.”

Fuery leans in next. “Can we help?”

Roy glances at Riza, whose eyebrows have risen approximately a millimeter, which means that she’s interested but doesn’t want to encourage him.

Jackpot.

He lays the plans out on the table and starts unrolling. “If you were in the business of using mayhem and destruction for the purposes of a political statement,” he says, “which of course is such utter anathema to all of the unrelentingly upstanding soldiers in this room that it hardly bears contemplating—given the structure of our Immigrations building, where would you begin?”

One of Riza’s eyebrows inch upward much more measurably. “Somehow, I can’t imagine that you would go to the trouble of browbeating employees of the city planning division over a purely hypothetical exercise, sir.”

“Depends on the exercise,” he says, “but in this case, no. Could you keep both of our calendars as flexible as possible for the next few days?”

She favors him with a reprimanding look, but there’s a slight touch of intrigue behind it, and he already knows her answer anyway: “Yes, sir.”

  


* * *

  


Just after two, his desk phone rings, and his customary perfect-balance-of-indifference-and-bemusement-to-make-it-sound-like-he’s-important answer segues directly into: “There’s… a note for you, General, from… well, a boy off of the street brought it in, and he said it wasn’t from him but that he couldn’t tell us who it _was_ from. And that it was urgent. It doesn’t look like there’s anything strange about it, but…”

He thought he had more time.

He supposes that he could live a thousand years and never have enough time to fix things, or to solve things, or to settle a single wrong back to rights, so it’s really no surprise.

“Ah,” he says, drawling it so that no trace of his skittering heartbeat will make it through. “Another adoring fan, I imagine.”

“Um…”

“Send it up whenever you can. No hurry.”

“Certainly, sir.”

No one in this building is likely to make a general wait for his mysterious mail, but it doesn’t hurt to pretend.

Sure enough, he’s barely even shuffled up the day’s reports to make himself look busy before a knock at the outer office door ushers in a corporal that he’s never seen before. She hesitates on the threshold, snapping off a salute before sparing a glance for the stares of his team, and then holds out a small white envelope.

“This was left for you at the front, General Mustang, sir,” she says. “I’m told they called up…?”

“They did indeed,” he says, putting the purr underneath it as he swings himself out of his chair and upright, dragging one hand along the edge of his desk for good measure as he strolls towards her. “It was terribly kind of you to bring it all this way.”

The stare is now fixed solely on him, and she likely won’t remember any of the details about the letter or the envelope or the boy who brought it by the time she makes it back to the desk. He gives her one of his finest, warmest, sharpest smirks just to make sure of it as he extends his hand.

“Oh,” she says, slightly faintly. The stare lingers on his gloved fingertips, wanders up along his wrist, stops, and the flicks up to his face as her cheeks darken. “I—of course, sir. Happy to help, sir. Um—”

He plucks the note from between her fingers and tilts the smirk just a touch. “Very much appreciated.”

“Yes, sir,” she says, blinking up at him. “I—thank you, sir. I’ll—just—be going—”

“At ease, Corporal,” he says, smoother and sweeter than melted caramel, as she turns on her heel and scrambles out the door.

The moment that it’s fallen shut behind her, Havoc breathes one word so reverently that Roy almost makes time to preen: “ _Wow_.”

“And he’s not even using it,” Breda says. “How’s that for universal justice?” 

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Havoc says.

“Good point,” Breda says. “The universe is a—”

“No,” Havoc says. “The thing about how he’s not using it. What—”

Falman folds his hands. “I believe Second Lieutenant Breda was referring to E—”

“Are we going to read this or not, gentlemen?” Roy asks, perhaps a handful of decibels louder than is strictly necessary.

Riza exhales in a way that would almost, if one were inclined to think that she was capable of such a thing, sound like a stifled version of an exasperated sigh. Then she draws out one of the chairs at the table and settles in it.

Roy sits down next to her and opens the envelope.

Naturally, it fights him with more vigor than he anticipated possible, and he only narrowly escapes a paper cut on the rocky path towards victory. When he’s finally bested it, dodging the latest bout of vindictive treachery that Central City has to offer, he tugs out a tiny piece of matching stationery.

All it says is _3:00 PM, Thursday. —L._

That’s all it needs to say, of course. Roy recognizes the handwriting.

“Well, Lieutenant,” he says to Riza. He sets the note down on the tabletop and spins it so that the words will be upright for the stalwarts seated on the other side. “We’re going to have a long, intense team meeting off-site on Thursday afternoon, critical to the success of our department, and I’ll be unreachable for several hours.”

“Very good, sir,” she says.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A lot happens in this one, and some of it is very ouch. :c If you're not up for some Sad Boys Being Stupid™ (and Stupid Boys Being Sad™), you may want to wait until the next update comes out! ;__;

There must be something wired wrong in Roy’s head—some connector come loose, or two lines fixed to the wrong receivers, and somehow the opposite signals just keep going through. Straggling back from another draining day of tiptoeing through the political minefield, returning to his modest personal sanctuary only to find a young man with one tiger’s eye ringed in purpling bruises sprawled across his couch—that should feel like a violation of his privacy, not a tremendous relief. He’s always been solitary when it comes down to it. He’s always relied on having a certain amount of space. He knows that he needs people around him in the fray, and he never would have made it anything like this far without Riza as his right hand, but at home, at the end of the day, with all of the fight gone out of him and all of his nerves ground down to raw ends, slowly bleeding—

Somehow it feels backwards.

And somehow it feels _right_.

He waves the rolled-up building plans like a rather sad sort of banner before dropping them onto the coffee table, and then he fishes the envelope out of his breast pocket and holds it out to Ed.

Ed’s eyes only brighten as he skims the note, and they flick towards the blueprints before darting back up to Roy’s face. Slowly, he grins. Roy lost this battle a long time ago.

“So what’s the plan?” Ed says.

“Plainclothes and a small force well in advance,” Roy says. “Monitor the entrances. Ideally, I’d like to end this before it’s even started.”

“I _deal_ ly,” Ed says, dragging out the vowels. “You ever had the ‘ideally’ plan work out for you?”

“Occasionally, the stars align,” Roy says. “It’s not inconceivable tha—”

“The more you talk about how foolproof it is,” Ed says, “the worse it’s gonna go.”

Roy drops onto the couch beside him—a safe distance away. As safe as he can get with only a few feet to work with, anyway. “Whatever happened to the youthful optimism that led you to such soundbytes as ‘I don’t even care what it is; I’ll kick its ass and then your ass for doubting me’?”

“That was a good one,” Ed says, smiling nostalgically at the ceiling. “Wasn’t there a ‘bastard’ in there?”

“Probably,” Roy says. “I eventually went selectively deaf and stopped being able to hear that word.”

“That’s why I upgraded to ‘asshole’,” Ed says. “Have to keep it fresh.”

Roy lays a hand over his heart. “And here I thought we’d just made peace.”

“Meh,” Ed says. He leans forward and grabs up one of the blueprints. “So tell me about your stupid plan that’s not gonna work as soon as you tell me what it is.”

“Would it work better if I didn’t say anything?” Roy asks.

“No,” Ed says. “The only thing worse than it sabotaging itself is me sabotaging it on accident because I don’t know what the hell I’m supposed to do.”

“True,” Roy says.

“I try,” Ed says.

Roy holds his hand out for the rolled paper in Ed’s hand, and Ed smacks it into his palm—reaching close enough that their fingertips brush, which Roy hadn’t thought possible, or he wouldn’t have put either of them in a position to—

Not the time.

He unrolls the sheet again, rather less ceremoniously than the first few times, and flattens it on the coffee table. “Entrances are marked in—”

“Good,” Ed says. “I never could’ve figured out where the fuckin’ doors are on a building otherwise.” He notices the way that Roy is eyeing him and counters with a truly exceptional shit-eating grin. “Go on.”

“Are you sure?” Roy says. “We could just dispense with the explanation altogether so that you’ll have more time for giving me crap.”

“Don’t worry,” Ed says brightly. “I’ll find time. So who’s stationed where?”

  


* * *

  


Roy feels, about as strongly as he feels anything—that is, weakly, fuzzily, faintly, as if there’s a blurred mass of thickened air around him swallowing the sensations, rather like a dream—that he should receive some sort of award for each and every night that he survives with Ed. The combination of temptation and insomnia is more than he imagines many men could take. An hour, sometimes two, of lying still, listening to Ed’s soft breathing, squinting in the thin fall of the moonlight to watch every exhalation send a soft flutter through the ends of his bangs—it’s no small feat that Roy has managed, somehow, not to reach across the stretch of pillowcase between them and sweep a fingertip along the silver-kissed curve of a cheekbone, to smooth out a momentarily wrinkle of the forehead or soothe the periodic twitch of an eyebrow from the vagaries of a dream.

He dreams about Ed, now, when it isn’t the other things. He dreams about burying both hands in the impossible wealth of golden hair; he dreams about sealing their mouths together and the brush of Ed’s eyelashes against his. Waking hazy-headed and unsure what was real, what was said, what’s permitted—to have to sit up beside Ed some mornings and _believe_ , for an achingly endless second, that they had the conversation, with words or fingertips or lips or slowly-flushing skin, and then _remember_ —

Roy swore this sort of torment off a long, long time ago for good reason. It’s just like Ed to make him break the promises he made to protect himself.

How much of it is his own fault at this point? He’s tried, over and over, to keep half a cushion between them on the couch, two breaths between them in every conversation, a gap too wide to qualify as anything but platonic between their all-too-magnetic souls—he’s fought the physics of it at every turn. He’s held back; he’s bitten his tongue; he’s swallowed every sigh and smothered every impulse so that he would never once offer up an unequivocal opportunity. It’s in his instincts to reach out and touch the most beautiful things, but he’s pried his hands away and bent his own fingers backwards until they learned a lesson.

When Roy reaches the kitchen on Thursday morning, Ed is clutching two mugs—one in the automail hand, but it’s the one in the left that he holds out to Roy.

“Two sugars and some of that bullshit you like,” he says.

Roy deflected as many of the rocks as he could manage: how could anyone expect him to stop a landslide with his bare hands?

  


* * *

  


Roy, with his right hand in his pocket and a newspaper in the left, in the worse-fitting suit because it should be easier to move in, hopes that he looks as nondescript as he feels. He forewent the hat pulled down low over his face; indoors he thinks that that would draw suspicion—if not from the prospective culprits, certainly from the employees of the Immigrations building itself. Undue attention accumulates; it has its own gravity.

As much as the architecture allowed, he positioned them all within sightlines of one another—he stands at an intersection of hallways; Riza’s down the rightward corridor from him, lingering by the other exit door. She watches the stairs leading up to the next level; he waits by the ones descending to the basement. Ed’s halfway along the corridor ahead of Roy, which leads to the expansive foyer; Riza will be able to see Breda near the cafeteria, and Ed will have an eye on Falman, who can see Havoc and Fuery at the front doors.

Roy has to resist the urge to draw his watch out of his pocket: it’s a hilariously foolish dead giveaway, for one thing; for another, staring at the second hand dragging them all towards three o’clock one heartbeat at a time won’t change an iota of what’s to come. If anything, it will distract him from the inevitable progress of his own life. Isn’t that nice and poetic?

He supposes, however, that it might be better to be distracted by a clock than by the mouth-watering curve of Ed’s ponytail. The end of it keeps brushing just between his shoulder-blades every time he turns his head, and Roy can’t help cursing the navy blue collared shirt currently blocking his view of Ed’s skin, Ed’s spine, the small of his back, the curves of the muscles just above his incomparable ass—

Poetic, too, that Roy’s imagination abandons him without remorse every time that he pines for some sort of creative outlet in his life, but the instant that he admitted to himself that his attraction to Ed isn’t waning, his brain revved its way into overdrive, apparently for the rest of eternity.

It’s his own fault. It’s his own fault; it’s a mistake that he knew every moment that he was making; he deserves this and a thousand times more, a thousand times wo—

A scream from the front lobby—choked off halfway through, sharp enough to have him flinching, shrill enough to make the hair on the back of his neck prickle, desperate enough that Ed bolts down the hall before Roy’s even parted his lips to hiss at him to wait.

One gunshot, several echoes—this time Roy steels himself and holds still, but for turning towards Riza to lock eyes with her at the other end of the hall. She jerks her head upward, then nods towards the door behind him, then tilts her chin in the direction of the lobby—she’s going to clear the second floor, send them down to him to evacuate, and then meet him at the front. He nods back, tossing the newspaper aside, and she’s off, taking the stairs two at a time—

Not a moment too soon: people of all ages, dressed for an ordinary day’s work in a monochrome parade of blacks and grays, start streaming out of the offices along the hall just past him, which dead-ends on the far wall. He barely manages to shove the crash-bar on the exit door open, check the alley behind them to make sure it’s clear, and prop the door open wide before the flood of babbling Immigrations personnel washes towards him.

“Go to the park,” he calls over the hubbub. “Wilbur Park—go to the park. There will be an officer there. Careful on the steps—go to Wilbur Park.”

Even if they don’t—or can’t—hear him, Ross and her people will handle it. Sometimes he thanks his lucky stars for the simple, sheer competence of the vast majority of the human beings who are on his side.

Sometimes he thanks his lucky stars that there’s anyone on his side at all.

“Slowly,” he says, trying to catch elbows and steady shoulders as they pass. “Stay calm—Wilbur Park—”

The river of humanity thins to a trickle, and he ushers the last few out the door and down. Did Alana send some kind of memo, or are the evacuation drills here significantly more effective than the grand total of two that they’ve had in all the time that he’s been stationed at Central Command?

When the door falls shut, and the bar _shnk_ s back into place, he lets out a slow breath, squinting down the length of the hall ahead. A scattering of additional gunshots greets his eager ears, but he can’t tell—

It takes him several too-long seconds to differentiate the footsteps from the gunfire.

By the time he turns, a young Ishvalan man—long white hair tied back at the base of his neck—has made it most of the way up the basement stairs towards him, pistol drawn, raised, and aimed.

Roy can’t feel the glove on his left hand. He can’t feel any of his extremities; he can’t feel his fingertips, or his feet, or his face—

The gun swings up, then up further, pointed above them both—a flurried spark ushers in the sound of the universe rending around a bullet’s trajectory. Glass shatters and rains, and the part of Roy willing the rest of him to duck away—to cover his head, to shield his eyes—loses out to the monolithic roaring _emptiness_ fixing him unmoving where he stands.

The decimated lightbulb overhead gives one last feeble flicker before it blinks out, and the hallway dims around them.

“That’s your one warning, Mustang,” the boy says, lip curling, blood-red eyes alight.

He hasn’t lowered the gun yet, and he’s so damn _young_ —young enough that he likely hasn’t killed anyone; young enough that he’d hesitate to do it again even if it’s not the first time. Young enough that he may never once have fired on a living target; young enough that he might think that bloodless battles still exist. Young enough to believe that it’s easy. Young enough to believe that idealism and a strong will might just get him by.

Roy could incinerate him in a quarter of a minute—could target the vitals to kill faster and stop the suffering, if the Flame was feeling merciful.

The boy’s eyes bore into his; the scowl deepens into a snarl.

Roy can’t move. He hears himself breathing shallowly; his heartbeat skitters through his skull; he cannot—cannot _force_ himself—to raise his hand.

He could snap his fingers and end this in an instant. It wouldn’t even require a fatality: he could singe the kid’s hands; he could heat up the metal of the gun and let conduction do the hard work for him—hell, even just the threat of his capabilities might frighten a rational person into surrender.

He supposes that he’s not in much of a position to talk of rational people. He’s never been one, no matter how well he pretends.

It takes several world-darkening blinks and frantic pulse-beats for the revelation to dawn in the boy’s red eyes—somehow, some way, by some token of magic or some twist of fate, he’s caught Roy Mustang defenseless.

Roy strains against the stillness; he has to find some fraction of himself that hasn’t yet succumbed to the statue—that hasn’t frozen solid but for the blood whirling through him, silent except for the cresting scream of howling panic resonating back and forth inside his head—

There has to be some _piece_ of him—

The boy starts to smile, slowly, uncertainly, with an edge of terror and a curl of malice, as though he simply can’t believe his luck.

Then he starts to raise the pistol, the better to point the gasp of infinity in the center of the barrel directly at Roy’s forehead.

“Well?” he says. “Cat got your fuckin’ tongue?”

Roy can barely hear the breath rasping in and out of him, shuddering into his lungs and coiling there for refuge before it slithers up and free of him again—

But he can feel—

Everything.

The hot spray of blood across his face—chips of bone like shrapnel, and a cut on his cheek from it that kept oozing sluggishly afterward; and that’s the only thing that’s ever made perfect sense, because blood begets blood begets blood; the only thing that killing builds is cemeteries, and he has filled so many, _many_ graves—

The afterimage of yesterday and the haze of now shimmer endlessly and overlap—it’s the same boy, with the same gun, leveled at his forehead, right between his eyes. It’s the same trembling hand, the same tentative tightening of the fingers until the knuckles blanch white; it’s the same knot rolling down the same throat as the boy swallows, and inhales, and locks his elbow, and sets his jaw, and—

Only the faintest pattering; only a distant sound like raindrops on the pavement that doesn’t even penetrate the two moments blurring into one.

But the cry—

“ _Hey_!”

Ed, pelting down the dark hall towards them, draws Roy’s eyes; out of their corners he can see that the barrel of the gun shifts with the Ishvalan boy’s attention—

Ed drops to the left knee and _slides_ —anyone else would tumble head over heels; his slacks rip along the metal lines, but he’s already slammed both palms on the floor tiles. Marble ripples like water—like the smoke and tormented air of a blast radius—so fast that Roy barely has time to flinch.

The walls liquify, and the archway to the basement stairs splits into stone beams. Everything converges on the Ishvalan gunman: one narrow pillar snakes at reckless speed up along his arm; half a scream escapes him before a stone hand claps itself over his mouth.

Roy manages to blink, dizzily, trying to determine which direction gravity used to go; and then Ed, on his feet again, jumps up to pluck the gun out of the Ishvalan’s pinioned hand. He grabbed it in the automail, and he spares it a distasteful look before he shoves it at—

Roy, of course, who accepts it stupidly. Somehow his numb fingertips don’t fumble it. His thumb switches on the safety; he tucks it into the back of his belt—

Ed grabs his hand the instant that it’s free again—warm left into Roy’s right, clasping too tight and too real and much too meaningful—and hauls so hard that Roy stumbles three steps before he can mimic the immediate transition to a run.

Roy should say a lot of things.

What he does say, staring at the shredded portion of Ed’s slacks, is: “I gave you so much grief about those leather pants.”

“Shut up,” Ed says. “We’re pinned down in the damn lobby—there’s a _lot_ of ’em. Alana stopped ’em from taking hostages by locking people in a closet somehow, but—”

They skid around another corner, and Ed yanks him down to his knees—hard enough to bruise, but since that’s significantly less permanent than being perforated by the bullets that sing overhead, he can’t complain.

As promised, his team has hunkered down behind a low marble wall liberally decorated with alchemy marks, tall enough to crouch behind and thick enough to offer their adversaries little more than a puff of white dust every time another bullet strikes it. Roy drops down between Riza and Fuery; Fuery is fussing with a buzzing radio while Riza reloads a rifle. Whence Riza acquired a rifle is beyond Roy’s ability to guess: despite her remarkable talent for concealing firearms, today’s trousers and shirt leave no space whatsoever for anything of that size. That said, Roy wouldn’t put it past her to have broken in here last night and stashed some of her personal supply in a storage room in case of precisely this contingency.

“Their guns are old,” Havoc says from the edge of the wall. He darts a look around the corner, firing almost before he could possibly have seen a thing, and then slings himself back before the return volley skims past the marble beside him. “Gotta be contraband.”

“Aerugan?” Fuery asks, too calmly.

“Drachman, by the design,” Falman says.

Riza crouches, shifts, swivels, straightens just enough to fire over the wall, and drops back down beside Roy. She listens to the counter-fire, head slightly tilted, and then nods, slowly. “Drachman.”

Breda glances at Roy, which means that they’re thinking along the same lines. “Could’ve been stolen instead of sold.”

“Very likely,” Roy says, fishing the confiscated pistol out of the back of his belt to hand it to Falman for confirmation. “But stolen by whom?”

“I can’t believe you just said fucking ‘whom’,” Ed mutters. “Can we deal with this now and do the politicking later?”

“Of course,” Roy says.

They’ll have to deal with it eventually: if the Chosen are, in fact, supplied by someone from inside the government, a simultaneous attempt to entangle a semi-hostile nation and to discredit Olivier Armstrong’s command thickens the plot like blood clotting in the sand.

Roy maneuvers up onto his knees—definitely bruised, by the delicate, almost tender sort of pain that suffuses them when they have to take his weight—and braces his ungloved hand against the wall, moving to take—

What won’t be a glance, evidently, since Ed grabs his arm and jerks him back down before he can shift high enough for so much as a glimpse of the room beyond and the orientation of their adversaries within it.

“Are you out of your mind?” Ed says, and the automail grips so tightly that Roy thinks he’ll probably bruise there, too, in finger shapes.

He tries—he _tries_ —to slow the careening of his heartbeat, to deafen himself to the trill of the alarms and swallow the sharpness of the nettles in his throat.

But the anger splits him open and spills like an oil slick, and much as he struggles to cup it in his hands, it’s already soaking his lungs, poisoning his breath, dripping from his ribs—

“My intention,” he bites out, “was to avoid any killing, which I’d dared to hope that you might appreciate, but it will be physically impossible to avoid if I can’t see where they _are_.”

Ed glares at him for a long second, mouth twisting into a familiar scowl, and he opens his mouth—

Then he blinks.

His face relaxes, and he pauses, and then he says, “Mirror.”

Roy stares at him, then scans the marble rubble scattered around them. “I… hardly… think…”

Fuery plucks his glasses off and holds them out. “Can you use these?”

“I—yeah,” Ed says, gingerly taking them by the frame, biting down on his bottom lip. “Only—I mean, shit, it’ll _work_ , but it’s not gonna give us a whole lot of material to work w—”

“Hell,” Roy says. He reaches into the inside breast pocket of his suit jacket and retrieves his own. What an inimitable excuse to avoid paperwork until he can find another pair. “Is this enough?”

Ed snatches it from him, starting to grin. “Let’s find out.”

Roy turns to Riza. “Can you give me some cover fi—”

She’s up, rifle angled just over the wall, sighting, squeezing the trigger, and back down almost before his brain has completed the thought, let alone the sentence.

“Thank you,” he says. “Lieute—”

Havoc follows suit around the corner of the wall, whipping back in the nick of time before another puff of white dust heralds the reply.

“They’re still there,” Havoc says.

“I’d guessed,” Roy says.

“Everybody shut up a second,” Ed says, but Roy doesn’t even have to swing a quick reprimanding glare around the assembled company—his whole team instantly goes silent, and the only sounds left to interfere with Ed’s concentration are a few more gunshots and some slightly muffled whimpering from the direction of the lobby’s desks.

It’s highly possible that Ed just wanted to put a damper on the bickering: Roy is positive that he’s worked through worse. Then again, Roy’s personal experience alchemically crafting minute quantities of fragile glass is somewhat limited, so perhaps the complicated array that Ed’s trying to fix inside his head is what necessitates the caution.

Fortunately, Roy doesn’t have to look away to retrieve his second glove from his pocket and slide it onto his right hand—it fits too well; it feels too comfortable. He likes to fantasize that someday, it won’t settle like a habit and hold him quite so close.

At the moment, though, it’s a benefit that he doesn’t have to miss the show: Ed’s alchemy has never been anything less than extraordinary to watch, and even now, Roy can’t help feeling a bright flicker of the faded joy that used to accompany every single transmutation. The way that Ed bends the universe to his will—heartfelt and feckless and wild and complacent, because he knows every atom of the air and the earth, and his hands belong among them—is always mesmerizing from the first spark of blue lightning to the last wisp of settling dust.

Today’s performance, importantly, twists a writhing spire of energy around the two forlorn-looking pairs of spectacles submitted as a sacrifice to equivalent exchange: light twirls, and the chalky tiles beneath them shudder slightly, and metal pools and melds somewhere in the middle of the maelstrom, and the glass of all the lenses starts to merge—

And then it’s done, and the air clears, and Ed is reaching into the remnants of the tiny hurricane to hold out a wide rectangular mirror suspended on a slender metal rod.

“It should telescope,” he says of the attachment. “Hang on—” He makes a valiant attempt to clean a smudge off of the glass by rubbing at it with his sleeve, failing to notice that his clothes are streaked with marble dust, and he appears to be making it worse. “Bet that was yours, Mustang.”

“Probably,” Roy says.

“Gentlemen,” Riza says.

“All right, all right,” Ed says. He pushes the mirror into Roy’s hands, and even with the gloves between, it’s like Roy’s nerves can’t wait to catch fire from the sheer proximity of him. “Do your little parlor trick.”

Ed’s construction is, as usual, utterly faultless: Roy pulls gently on the silver mount, and it extends smoothly; he draws it out to a satisfactory length, peers into the mirror to gauge the angles, squints, takes a split second to appreciate the irony of making a device for surveillance out of a device that ordinarily helps him to surveil, and then raises it just high enough to look over the top of the wall.

The element of surprise sustains him for an extra second—the moment that it takes the Chosen to process the strange little periscope that just appeared above the heads of their enemies gives him time to turn his wrist and solidify a mental map of the positions of the people in the room.

That’s all he needed.

Which is good, because the last thing he sees in the mirror is one of the men towards the front of the line—there are just about a dozen—raising his rifle, sighting down the barrel, and firing directly at—

The mirror, which splinters like ice and rains slender shards of glass down into Roy’s hair. Something hot runs on his cheek—one must have nicked him, but they’re so sharp that he barely felt the bite of it.

It doesn’t matter, because he’s laid out the positioning in his head, and the streaming current of instinct in him knows how to do the rest.

He taps into it—into the world that always warps itself so kindly around Ed. He has to cut channels through it by force, most days, but it bends to his ministrations all the same. He slices smooth lines of headiness through the ether—threads of pure oxygen, clean and sweet and dizzyingly flammable—

And then, both hands effortlessly simultaneous, he snaps his fingers.

The unseen filaments ignite.

He’s always felt that it sounds like the air itself is singeing—like the flame should sear charred marks on the very fabric of time, carving out its progress, with an ashen trail left behind. It’s a noise like ripping, like opening, like expansions, but the effect is nothing but destruction.

In this case, more specifically, the effect is a wall of choking smoke and a wealth of flame poured right against the metal of every firearm held by a member of the opposition: swiftly, suddenly, with a blue-burning intensity that rouses a chorus of shouts and howls, which is followed by a cacophony of hissed-out profanity and clanging as every single man who wants to keep his hands intact immediately drops his gun.

Everyone on this side of the wall knows Roy—not inside and out, precisely, but at his best, and at a great deal less, and at a number of different levels in between. He doesn’t really have to say anything at all.

For good measure, though, he breathes out, “With me” as he rises to his feet, turns on one heel, and snaps again to send a flurry of smaller, quicker, cooler flames towards every opponent that tries to move for another weapon—forcing them to recoil away from the heat, unsettled, stumbling back.

The man at their head—tall, sharp-eyed, bearded, looking equal parts poised and ferocious—must notice that Roy has deliberately avoided wounding anyone; he draws a sidearm from within his coat, betrayed by the faintest gleam of metal through the billowing smoke—

Before Roy can crook his elbow to raise his hand, Riza’s at his shoulder, rifle leveled.

“Put it down,” she says.

The man hesitates, gritting his teeth, sizing her up—

“Put it _down_ ,” she says, and this time the steel beneath her voice rings like a hammer on an anvil, utterly unmistakable, and Roy rubbing his fingertips together meaningfully is overkill.

Slowly, carefully, eyes alight with a rage that defies description, the leader of the Chosen sinks to one knee to lay his pistol on the floor.

A dart of movement draws Roy’s eye—the youngest of the dozen Ishvalans scattered in the lobby flips back his coat to reach for his belt—

Roy senses more than he sees Havoc moving at his right side; the touted speed of his famous hands gives him just enough time to sling his right arm out in front of his lieutenant and raise the left to snap his fingers once.

A spiral of concentrated flame is just as effective—and much less final—than a bullet. Havoc doesn’t tend to miss.

The boy’s pistol hits the floor tiles, too. Roy can see in every single pair of narrowed red eyes that they know him, now—by reputation, if not by sight. They know that the man who leveled their city and murdered their families just stymied their last resort.

“Lieutenant Havoc,” Roy says, “and Second Lieutenant Falman—secure the employees and see them out the back way. Liaise with Lieutenant-Colonel Ross at Wilbur.”

“Sir,” they say, in unison for once, before splitting off to his right side.

He doesn’t watch them go, signaling instead to Breda and Fuery. Hopefully the latter can, in fact, make out the fact that the gesture is directed towards him. “The military police should be out front by now. Would you two mind escorting them in?”

“Done deal,” Breda says, and Riza covers him just in case as he wrenches out the crowbar jammed through the handles of the front doors, letting Fuery through to the front steps before he follows.

Riza lowers her rifle approximately an inch—which is, by her standards, rather generous.

“Shit,” Ed says. “Is that—that’s it, isn’t it?”

“I hope so,” Roy says, making eye contact with the leader as he does.

“I’ll go get that guy I strung up by the stairs,” Ed says.

“Thank you,” Roy says.

He doesn’t look away from their cornered quarry as Ed’s footsteps stomp away and fade off down the marble hall. Everyone’s hands stay raised where he—and Riza, whose finger retreats from the trigger of her rifle at a positively glacial speed—can see them, but that can change in an instant, and he’s survived too many battles to believe in anything like honor anymore.

A great deal of tramping on the stairs out front heralds the arrival of the military police—they sent a smaller contingent than Roy asked for, but he supposes that he made their job easy enough that it shouldn’t matter much. Eight officers with several extra pairs of handcuffs should suffice so long as a few of them are relatively capable.

Two of them do a double-take when they see Roy; one hesitantly salutes; and the remainder get to work—so that comes close to answering that question.

Momentarily, a half-voiced collective growl ripples through the Ishvalans as the Immigrations employees come parading out of the hall opposite. Alana strides at their head, mouth set in a thin line, with Fuery and Havoc scrambling to keep pace with her on either side.

“She wouldn’t listen, Chief,” Havoc calls. “Said she wanted to see for herself, so—”

“I feel that is my right,” Alana says, and the clack of her heels on the tiles almost mimics the gunshots. “I wish to meet the men responsible for this, and I would like for them to meet _me_.”

Roy can understand the sentiment, he has to admit—Alana has never waded through these murky waters before; she doesn’t understand that by the time reactionaries storm a building with weapons, they’ve already categorized their enemy as something other than human, and no amount of conversation will change their minds.

He can’t blame them. The Amestrians who razed their homeland were worse than animals: grotesque, untiring, obscenely powerful, utterly merciless. Their holy land was decimated by faceless, blue-eyed beasts in the shape of men—marching lines of monsters without a trace of restraint or a fragment of remorse.

She stalks right up to the leader anyway, glaring into his face as the police wrench his arms behind him for the cuffs.

“We are on _your_ side,” she says. “We are one of a very few things standing between you and the people who are not.” She extends an arm, pointing at… Roy. “He is another.”

The leader of the Chosen stares at her, and then at Roy, for most of a second. Then his startlement gives way to a long, loud, sardonic laugh.

Roy doesn’t blame him for that, either.

Roy digs through the last reserves of his wit for some kind of comment to soothe Alana’s affronted expression before she starts hitting their prisoners, but a clamor of footfalls behind them makes him whirl around instead.

Ed has always had a knack for making a disproportionate amount of noise—although Roy knows, too, that he can move in silence when it suits him. Evidently, it doesn’t suit him now, since he’s manhandling the last young Ishvalan from the stairway into the room remarkably loudly, to say the least.

The fact that his captive writhes every step of the way against the skull-adorned bronze handcuffs restraining him—unquestionably the handiwork of a certain compactly-built alchemist whom Roy won’t implicate—doesn’t help matters.

“Come _on_ ,” Ed says, heels grinding on the dusty floor as he fights to keep his leverage. “It’s over, okay? Give it up.”

As most of the assembled company knows, Ed is a lean, concentrated mass of pure muscle and purer spite in situations like this—which is what makes it so surprising that the Ishvalan keeps nearly pulling free of his grip. It’s no news to Roy that anger can compel a human being to feats of strength, but all the same—

All the same, the Ishvalan makes a lunge at Roy as Ed drags him past, and Riza side-steps in front of him, rifle raised, before he has time to recoil away.

Which is good. He can’t show weakness—not here. He can’t let any of them see how much it matters; he can’t let any of them see how much it shook him when this boy in particular pointed a pistol between his eyes.

Gently, he extends an arm and touches Riza’s shoulder to usher her aside—she gives him a look askance but moves clear almost before his hand makes contact. It’s a symbolic gesture, and likely an unnecessary one, but a gesture in the right place can establish symbolic significance, and—

The momentary preoccupation means that he turns back towards the Ishvalan boy just in time for the spit to splatter on his face.

There’s a split-second where his brain’s so stunned that all he can manage to feel is… impressed. It’s a significant distance, and considering the poor consistency of the projectile, it was incredibly well-aimed.

That dissipates.

All that remains is the _rage_.

His vision almost whites out—the hurricane roars with such force that it blots out his hearing, too; three heartbeats slam through him before he shudders his way back into a universe where sensation exists. His skin tingles with the heat of his blood; it races in his ears and surges in his fingertips—

He wants to grab that miserable boy’s throat in both hands and _squeeze_ —

But it’s not—

But he _won’t_.

That isn’t him; that can’t be—he won’t let it; he won’t let it drag him in and swallow him whole. He won’t let it own him. He’s so much more; he can be so much _better_ —

He lifts his right hand slowly, in case it tries to follow the orders of the screaming whirlwind still rattling through his ribs, beating at the bellows of his lungs. He delves it into his shirt pocket and carefully draws out his handkerchief. He raises it to his face, trying to minimize the shaking of his fingers, and forces himself to smile.

It’s the best revenge anyway. He has to remember that—as much as this burns in him, as much as the demon in him grapples with the chains and screeches for release—nothing that he could _dream_ of suffering compares to what he did to them. Nothing will ever measure up. If they hurl small indignities, dismissiveness on his part is crueler than any possible retaliation. They want to hurt him, and they’re justified. Depriving them of that—

Well. In the long run, odds are good that it’s better for all of them.

Ed’s eyes linger on Roy’s for a long, long second before he wrenches his prisoner away and pushes him over towards the police officers watching open-mouthed.

“Guess we should probably use yours,” he says to the cops, pulling at the improvised handcuffs. “I borrowed this from the staircase railing, so it’s not gonna be safe for anybody to go downstairs until I put it back.”

The wind-down clean-up part that follows always feels like an anticlimax. Most of the adrenaline seeps out of Roy’s system, although apparently a few drops of it see fit to cling to the insides of his blood vessels and escape at intervals: periodically his heart skitters as they answer the police officers’ rote questions, and as they wait for Ross to bring the other employees back to the building. Once the unfortunate citizens have collected their belongings, they will be entitled to take a well-deserved few hours off.

Roy calls in to Central Command while they’re waiting: Lovan arrived in due course, as he’d anticipated, and was greeted with a signed, sealed note from Roy himself guaranteeing him a stint in a safe little office on the top floor until all of this blows over. Hopefully the barracks setup that Roy was working for him on yesterday will have come through by the time they make it back; if not, Lovan will likely be getting introduced to Roy’s mother, which will be an educational experience for all of them.

Havoc turns a toothpick over and over in his fingers as they wait for the final word from the officers. The Chosen were bundled into cars and carted off to the station; the lead officer is going over Alana’s testimony with her one last time. Roy watches the toothpick spin and can’t imagine why it makes his chest tighten. He has to keep unclenching his jaw by force. He can already feel the premonition of the headache, and the cut on his cheek has taken to itching with an unreasonable tenacity given its size.

Speaking of that particular combination—

“You went pretty easy on him,” Ed says, leaning against the pockmarked marble wall beside him. “The kid. After… everything.”

“They were doing what they felt they had to do,” Roy says. “All of them were. It’s never as simple as right versus wrong; it’s a spectrum, and we clouded the colors years ago. Risking civilians is wrong, but it’s a far cry from what they were taught by what we did to _them_.”

Riza breathes out slowly, but her hand doesn’t budge from the butt of her rifle where she’s leaned it up against her shoulder. He meant only to describe himself, but of course that, too, bogs down in complications the instant that he opens his mouth.

“Besides,” he says. “Violence is a cycle. The wheel will never stop turning unless someone stands up and stands in front of it. If the only thing I lost today was a moment’s pride, and I might have saved another volley of push and push back—then that’s no sacrifice at all.”

Silence settles. So does some of the dust.

Then the movement at his side draws his eyes to Ed, and he turns his torso instinctively—just in time for a pair of mismatched hands to fist themselves in the front of his shirt and haul him down into an encounter of mouths that starts out much more bite than kiss.

Instinct continues to inspire Roy Mustang to new and unprecedented heights of stupidity: he closes his eyes, leans into it, and lifts one hand to run his fingertips down along Ed’s jaw, brushing the soft curtain of the gold bangs back in the process, and then rests his palm against the side of Ed’s neck. He’s already tilted his head to improve the angle where their mouths meet—putting an overdue end to the startling bump of teeth; this is a _kiss_ , and he intends to treat it like one; he is not renowned in whispers among the secretarial pool for nothing, and he takes the unawarded accolades quite seriously.

Ed’s lips are much softer than his teeth in any case; his tongue is clumsy and fearless and charming and _definitely_ pushing at Roy’s. It is a mess of a thing despite his efforts—wet and sudden and strange and utterly unrefined.

And he loves it.

Probably that says more about Ed as a partner than about Ed’s technique, which is a terror for another time, because Roy might just have a few more seconds to press into this, to stroke his hand up over Ed’s ear and bury it in his hair—to revel in the faint sigh of an out-breath that slips from Ed’s mouth and curls directly into his—

And then the heat of Ed’s body retreats, and the air between them cools, and Roy blinks his eyes open to discover that Ed’s expression merges something like horror with something like vicious satisfaction.

There are several dozen reasons not to like that, but Roy doesn’t dare to hope that he’ll have time to enumerate any of them.

“You _fucker_ ,” Ed says, and then immediately turns on his heel and stalks straight down the hall. “I’m—going back to work.”

Roy stands as still as he can, attempting to assess exactly how real that was. Perhaps if he just doesn’t… move… it simply won’t have happened. Perhaps he dreamed it. Perhaps he hit his head. Perhaps if he doesn’t even _breathe_ , at least he won’t make it any worse.

What part of it went wrong? He shouldn’t have reciprocated, obviously, but if that wasn’t what _Ed_ wanted, then he wouldn’t have struck like a snake before Roy had time to think. Ed doesn’t ask for things he isn’t desperate for; he hates nothing more than relying on others; if he reached out and took, it was involuntary and inevitable. For him to initiate a move like that—

It wasn’t what Ed _wanted_ at all, was it? It was more, and less, and simpler. It was a matter of need. Impulse and compulsion united against him, and something in what Roy said fired that ferocious blood so suddenly that neither of them stood a chance.

Ed’s young, after all—young and hotheaded, inexperienced; curious and reckless and so damn beautiful, and so alone. It wasn’t a rational thought. It wasn’t—

“Oh,” Havoc says. “Is that what you meant earlier about how the General’s wasting his God-given talents with the ladies because of Ed?”

Distantly, Roy hears something that sounds rather like a back being patted, followed by Breda’s voice. “Yup.”

“Huh,” Havoc says. “Cool.”

“I think,” Roy says, very slowly, “that we should all pretend very hard that that never happened.”

“Like hell,” Havoc says. “Can I have your little black book?”

Roy finally musters a sufficient combination of intellect and self-control to turn a glare on him. “Lieutenant, even if this was, in fact, a—if it was something, which I suspect it is _not_ , those aren’t a list of free passes to hot dates. Most of them are my _notes_.”

“I got time,” Havoc says. “I’ll try ’em all. About what proportion did you throw in that are real to put people off the scent? Y’know, just so I can estimate the amount of hours I’m gonna need. And the phone bill.”

“Ah,” Roy says, as the front doors swing open—in the nick of time to save him from additional torture. “For the first time in my life, I’m glad to see the press.”

“Man,” Breda says. “You’re _really_ into him.”

“I am no such thing,” Roy says, and it tastes like blood on his tongue, but he’s striding towards the journalists currently gazing around the room in morbid fascination. “It was a misunderstanding. I’ll explain it later. Good _afternoon_ , everyone. I’ve been involved with this just about since it began—Mrs. Belmor, my dear, would you like to join me?”

  


* * *

  


The unrelenting schmooze-fest worked on the journalists, as it always does. Alana, to her ever-growing credit, followed his lead—lying to the press is a Bradley tactic, and Roy won’t touch it with a ten-foot pole as long as he lives, but omission is a finer line, and walking it requires enormous finesse. Today, it meant telling them, in excruciating detail, the exact positions of everyone in the room at any given time, but failing to mention items such as the suspected origin of their weapons. He makes sure to credit a ‘reliable source’ who contacted Alana initially and was then vetted intensely by the Intelligence team and deemed trustworthy, without offering any identifying characteristics whatsoever of the source in question. He can’t afford for them to know—and immediately extrapolate, and immediately thereafter sensationalize—anything that he doesn’t understand entirely and can’t guide the angle of. Giving them all of the facts would only bury everyone in useless speculation, and the accusations and the mud-slinging wouldn’t take long to follow. The bare bones don’t make for much of a story, but they’re significantly closer to safe.

With the paltry remains of his intellectual capacity—he’s stretched very thinly, now, but he hasn’t snapped, which he supposes is something to celebrate—he oversees the setting up of a perimeter until they can get repair crews in to deal with the damage to the building. When all of that is finished, and the premises have gone bizarrely quiet after everything that came before, he rounds up his stalwart troops, and at long last they head out and onward.

He piles them all into his car and drops most of them off at their residences, since it’s late, and no one was foolish enough to leave anything at Central Command—except for Roy himself, of course, and what he left was a present to himself in the form of an Ishvalan informant, and that’s a rather different matter.

Bestowing Lovan in a place in the dorms takes another hour, although at least he only has to pull rank once to get away with it—he’d feared it might be worse than that. By the time he finally straggles back down the front steps and settles into his car with the intent of _leaving_ this time, it’s nearly eight. He’s ravenous and exhausted and so piqued by now that he thinks that the next loud noise might shatter him.

When he parks in front of his house, however, the lights are on.

He kills the engine and removes the keys, but he doesn’t get out of the car.

He’s not sure that he wants to. He’s not sure that he’s ready for this—whatever it is; whatever it turns out to be. If Ed has been in his home, waiting for him, for any portion of the intervening hours—

What is Ed going to say? Nothing Roy hasn’t thought by now, most likely, but somehow it always stings a little sharper when the words ride off someone else’s tongue than when he speaks the venom in the privacy of his own mind.

A part of him—the part that routinely entertains urges to thrust his hand into the middle of a flame—hopes that Ed will be angry. It wouldn’t be an overly reasonable reaction, or a particularly pleasant one, but at least an angry Ed he knows how to deal with. All of the other possibilities…

Well, the one thing that he knows for sure is that procrastinating by sitting here in his car until the clock hands drag them to an even wearier hour will only worsen Ed’s demeanor, whatever it is. Roy’s _tired_. If he’s going to have a little more of the life beaten out of him tonight, it’s better to get it over with now.

He collects his coat and the briefcase into which he shoved several neglected reports and an otherwise unmarked page with the direct phone line to Lovan’s dormitory, and he forces himself to get up out of the car.

His belongings feel far heavier than they have any right to by the time that he reaches the door. He tries the handle, but Ed locked it after himself—which is appreciated, regardless of whether it was born out of habit or out of a charitable consideration for Roy’s paranoia. As he’s fishing for his keys, he hears footsteps within, and then the bolts grind, and the door swings open.

Ed, framed in Roy’s own damn doorway, with his hair down and damp from a recent shower, in rumpled clothes and his sockfeet…

It didn’t work the first time, but an odd streak of optimism makes Roy try it again: perhaps if he simply doesn’t _move_ , this won’t have happene—

“Hey,” Ed says, but a split-second of eye contact is all that Roy merits before Ed shuffles away, heading towards the kitchen without looking back. “Felt bad for ditching you with the boring shit. I cooked.”

It takes Roy a moment to process that Ed is apologizing for stranding him with the cleanup, not referring to the strangest, wildest, and single most abrupt kiss of Roy’s life as ‘boring’.

“You didn’t have to do that,” Roy manages, stepping inside and shutting the door. Should he lock them in? What if something gets said in the heat of the moment, and one of them feels compelled to storm out like the miserable font of melodrama that they both not-so-secretly are?

It will itch like an insect bite at the back of his mind if he doesn’t turn the locks. He’ll just have to risk stymying a histrionic exit. Perhaps, if he’s very lucky, it won’t come to that at all.

“Yeah, I did,” Ed is saying. “Otherwise you probably wouldn’t’ve eaten anything, ’cause you’re dumb like that. You didn’t even think about it, did you?”

Roy steps into the kitchen doorway, drawn there by the olfactory equivalent of siren song, and watches Ed reach directly into the oven with the automail hand to retrieve a casserole dish, which gets set on the countertop. “It… occurred to me at one point. About two hours ago. And then I forgot. I would have… improvised.”

“Uh huh,” Ed says, retrieving a smaller, covered dish to place beside its colleague. “I fed the cats and got all the stupid dust off and tried to call Al and then called here, and you weren’t back yet, so I figured I might as well make myself useful or whatever.”

“That was very kind of you,” Roy says.

Ed eyes him and then stretches to reach the cabinets to pull down some plates. Rarely in his life has Roy bitten his tongue more vigorously. “It’s not exactly altruistic when I’m hungry, too.”

“I think it still counts,” Roy says.

“Consummate fuckin’ politician,” Ed says. The casserole dish is full of a magnificent amalgam of what appears to be potatoes, broccoli, and cheese. The other dish looks like chicken. Roy’s knees weaken substantially as the smells continue to waft past him, and he continues to linger in the doorway, waiting for the other shoe to fall. Evidently, Ed has noticed: “You gonna come get some, or what?”

Roy does not remark on the fact that that was something of a poor choice of words. Roy does not comment on how clumsily they are dancing around the issue. Roy does not ask what else Ed might have done, or thought, or wondered in the intervening time.

He has no right to ask or say any of those things.

At the moment, he has virtually nothing at all.

Which is… fine, he supposes. Rock bottom’s not bad to build on. Ed’s the one who put that thought in his head in the first place, some impossible weeks ago.

Moving slowly, he crosses to the counter to serve himself as Ed finishes weighing down his own plate—and as he approaches, Ed shies away.

At least that confirms that Roy didn’t dream it, or hallucinate it—that it’s not some fresh new form of torment conjured by his self-defeating brain. That’s something. He’s not sure what it is, precisely, but it’s certainly _something_.

He recognizes, in a vague sort of way, that his body is experiencing hunger, even if his brain doesn’t seem to care much either way, so he transfers what seems like a substantial portion of food onto his plate and carries it over to the table. Ed hovers, pretending to be preoccupied with picking at a spot on his fork with one fingernail, until Roy sits down, and then he settles on the other side of the table—one chair down, instead of in the seat opposite. Roy can’t quite tell without the aid of his martyred glasses, but he’d be willing to bet that the fork is and always has been immaculately clean.

Roy strives to appreciate the food. Some nights, it’s easier; others it feels like his tastebuds have been entirely disconnected from the pleasure centers in his brain—like someone hacked through all of the pathways that used to link them. Things still taste objectively pleasant, but it doesn’t _matter_ , and he can’t force himself to feel a thing.

For the first two minutes of the meal—if that is the right word in a case like this one— Ed sits very still but for stabbing at his food and shoveling bites into his mouth in prickly silence. Roy counts down the last fifteen seconds, for something like fun, and then takes pity on them both.

He asks, casually, about Ed’s research—which, these days, wouldn’t occupy enough conversational time to carry them through the length of a dinner eaten at Ed’s pace, let alone one eaten at his own, because Ed bounces ideas off of him over breakfast or in doorways or when they both should be trying to sleep. To that end, he pretends to have forgotten some of the details that Ed mentioned over the weekend, so that Ed has to roll his eyes and lay out a refresher, and _then_ he can proceed to his latest ideas, and that and some fork-waving bring them through to the point where Ed has eaten enough and is mostly just doodling with his utensils in the remnants on his plate.

Roy lets silence bow between them for a long second before he says, “Would you like to talk about it?”

Ed looks up from fork-tine art, so startled for a moment that it looks like there’s a touch of vulnerability in it.

_Then_ the scowl.

“No,” he says.

Roy blinks. “I think—”

“You’re just gonna be pissed,” Ed says. “And I don’t blame you for being pissed. You’ve got every right to be pissed. But I’m really friggin’ tired, and you are, too, and I just—I don’t wanna fight about it right now, and I’m _sorry_ , okay? So—we can talk about it another time, and you can get pissed off then, and right now we can just—not—and—”

“I’m not angry,” Roy says.

Ed snorts, rolling the handle of the fork between his fingertips. “Yes, you are.”

Roy blinks at him—which, as always, avails very little, but it was worth a shot. “Am I?”

Ed glares.

“All right,” Roy says. “Why am I angry?”

“Because I took the perfectly good thing we had and fucked it up,” Ed says. “Like I _always_ do.”

“Ed,” Roy says.

“Besides which,” Ed says, raising his voice over Roy’s, “I sprung that bullshit on you without even asking, in front of your _entire_ team, although I’m not sure how much Lieutenant Fuery could actually tell what was happening. And then I fucked off and left you to deal with that, _followed_ by the journalists and shit. And—and you didn’t even ever give me any indication that you might remotely not-hate the whole idea, but I did it anyway, and that’s fucked up.”

“Ed,” Roy says, resting his chin on his palm and attempting at a serene little smile as his heart goes haywire, “you may have noticed that I kissed you back.”

Ed leans back, arms crossed tighter by the second. “You were being polite.”

Roy raises his eyebrows. “Was I? I didn’t realize politeness involved so much tongue.”

Ed flushes hotly, shoving his chair back, and starts collecting the dishes with a tremendous ruckus the instant he’s on his feet. “This is exactly why I didn’t wanna talk about it.”

Roy’s faster—even now. He shouldn’t take pride in it, but he has so little left: having the quicker hand, and succeeding in pinning Ed’s left wrist to the table to hold him still, feels like an accomplishment. “Better that than running from it, don’t you think?”

“Fuck you,” Ed says, writhing against Roy’s grip hard enough to make him reconsider—but not relent. “That’s your game. I face up to my shit.”

Roy steels himself against the sting of that—too late, of course, to stop the spread of it, but guardedness prevents the poison from penetrating quite as deep. “I’m not trying to put you on the defensive. I’d appreciate it if you extended the same courtesy.”

“I _told_ you I don’t want to fight about it,” Ed says, yanking his way free while Roy’s unbalanced and then stalking across the room. He doesn’t exactly drop his dishes into the sink, but the clanging and clattering and the threatening sounds of ceramic against the basin make Roy’s spine tighten like a bowstring. “Just tell me you’re pissed off, and I can apologize, and we can just—” A breath shudders in and out of him. “Can we just—acknowledge that I fucked up and move on?”

Roy sets both elbows on the tabletop and folds his hands before they start to shake. “Why are you so convinced you fucked up?”

Ed wheels on one heel and storms directly towards him, and it takes a considerable portion of Roy’s willpower to resist the urge to shift back in his chair. “Because I _did_. Just—you don’t want me. You don’t.”

Roy’s mouth goes dry; his throat winches halfway shut; but somehow he makes it sound casual: “Don’t I?”

“If you’d try listening for a half a second instead of just repeating every single thing I say as a question,” Ed grits out, “maybe you wouldn’t be too fucking stupid to have figured out—”

He reaches for Roy’s plate, and Roy catches both his wrists this time—and it’s an art form, in its way: gripping tight enough to hold but not enough to hurt.

“Edward,” he says. “You’re not hearing me.”

Ed jerks hard with the right arm, first, but Roy was prepared for that, and the jar of the metal against his fingers doesn’t break his grasp. “Because you’re not fucking _saying_ anything.” Ed wrenches his body backwards again, fiercer still this time. “Let _go_.”

It’s the faintest hint of a quaver in his voice that loosens Roy’s fingers—he shouldn’t have done it, likely; touching another person without express permission is questionable to begin with, and caging someone like Ed at _any_ time, let alone a time like this—

“I’m sorry,” he says. “May I make myself abundantly clear?”

Ed takes one step back, and then another. His chest rises and falls; he sets his jaw; he tilts his head to guide his hair out of his face, and it slithers over his shoulder, and Roy clenches his hands together underneath the table this time.

“Only if you don’t say ‘abundantly clear’ ever again,” Ed says. “Where the hell did that crap come from?”

Roy smiles at him, dagger-edge thin. “Now who’s running?”

Ed presses both hands to his face, angling it towards the ceiling—which arches his back, which accentuates his ass, which instantaneously derails Roy’s brain, which is so much of the problem, here, isn’t it?

“Fuck,” Ed says. “Just—say what you gotta say. Just _say_ it. None of your bullshit, none of the long words. Don’t sugarcoat for me. I can handle it. If this is—if this thing isn’t gonna work, then—fine. We’re both fucking grown-ups. We’ll survive, and we’ll move on, and it’ll be fine.” He lowers his hands, then his head, and then he raises his chin—guarded, haggard, stumbling, and still so damn beautiful in the throes of the indefatigable defiance. “So just—if you want me to go, just _tell_ me. I can take it.”

Roy’s mouth works before he can assess the terrain and plot the least-dangerous course over the obstacles, dancing between the half-buried mines. He doesn’t get the chance to think.

“I don’t want you to go,” he says. “I don’t want you to go anywhere.”

Ed’s eyes narrow. The fingers of his left hand curl slowly into a fist at his side.

“No bullshit,” he says.

“None,” Roy says.

The corner of Ed’s mouth twitches. “That’s a fucking first.”

“It is _not_ ,” Roy says.

“Still pretty rare,” Ed says. “Practically magical. Like a solar eclipse. Or a unicorn. Or—”

Roy folds an arm on the back of his chair and stretches his legs out, crossing them at the ankle. “I thought you were trying to convince me not to kick you to the curb.”

“Try it, old man,” Ed says.

“Insubordinate brat,” Roy says.

A weak smile’s still a smile, and a peace founded on lies of omission is gentler than none at all.

  


* * *

  


Lying side-by-side in bed that night is… particularly strange. The peculiar combination of intimacy and cognitive dissonance about the intimacy in question has swanned skyward to entirely new heights—ones that Ed couldn’t reach with a sizable stepladder, Roy would like the record to show; although to be entirely fair, they’re also well out of his own reach.

Evidently, he’s not the only one who’s noticed, since Ed has rolled over onto his side at the very edge of the mattress, facing the doorway instead of Roy.

Roy swallows, pauses, and weighs each of the individual words on his tongue before he speaks:

“Are you all right?”

_All right_ is a deceptive phrase to start with: no one is ever _all_ right. Roy supposes that the best that people like the two of them, with what they’ve done and been and seen, can hope for is a greater proportion of right than wrong, and a sufficient stretch of emotional stability to cope with the alternations. _Okay_ sounded like a worse option still, though, and perhaps the good intentions of the question will counterbalance the imperfect phrasing.

“Fine,” Ed says. After all of that overthinking, a rather masochistic part of Roy was almost hoping for more. “Just—it’s weird now. It’s _definitely_ weird now. You can say whatever bullshit you want to about weird being an acceptance thing, but now it’s _weird_. I made it weird. Fuck.”

“You didn’t make it any weirder than usual,” Roy says.

“Liar,” Ed says. Unfortunately, this time, he’s right. “I could sleep on the floor. I could sleep on the couch. I could sleep in another country. Maybe I could launch myself into space. Bet it’s real quiet up there.”

“It was just a little lie,” Roy says. “With the best of intentions.”

“Intentions can only take you so far,” Ed says, which Roy supposes is better than declaring that they don’t matter at all. “I just—I’m so tired of it. I’m so tired of getting good things and then fucking them up. Aren’t you supposed to start to suck less at sorting shit out once you get to be a grownup? Like, aren’t things supposed to just—fall into place?”

“Things fall,” Roy says. “Often and with great abandon. And we can’t ever hope to catch them all. Sometimes where they land is better than where we would have put them. Sometimes they break.”

“I know,” Ed says, and there’s almost a trace of a catch in his voice. “I _know_ ; I just—it’s supposed to get easier. Right? Eventually.”

“Ed,” Roy says. “Look at me.”

Ed rolls just far enough to glare at him with one eye, which would be more difficult to appreciate if it wasn’t very nearly glowing in the dark. “Why? So it can be even more weird, and you can lie about it some more?”

Roy favors him with one of the sweetest, warmest, winsomest smiles in the arsenal. “Please?”

Quite a bit of grumbling precedes Ed’s concession, but concede he does, and then the tiger’s eyes are fixed on Roy directly, and the space of bed between them seems immense and infinitesimal at once.

Ed glowers. “What?”

“You didn’t do anything wrong,” Roy says.

“Like hell,” Ed says. “Why do you keep defending me when you’re the one who got the worst of it?”

“If that’s the worst you can do,” Roy says, “I’m not impressed.”

The faint light makes it difficult—but not impossible—to make out the downturn of the familiar scowl. “Can we make a household rule that nobody’s allowed to talk in stupid-ass riddles for an entire night instead of answering a single question?”

“My house, my rules,” Roy says. “Ed—”

“ _What_?”

“I wasn’t being polite,” Roy says.

“Whatever,” Ed says. “I can’t make words do my fucking bidding the way that you do. You know what I meant.”

“I do know what you meant,” Roy says. “But your interpretation is wrong.”

The edge on the silence echoes more like disbelief than like hostility, which at least makes it better than Roy braced himself for.

“Okay,” Ed says. “En-fucking-lighten me.”

“My pleasure,” Roy says.

He would like his epitaph to read _Still managed banter when his heart was humming so fast that it had almost taken flight_.

In the meantime, though, he shifts one elbow onto the mattress between them to hold himself steady, and leans across the space to slide the other hand into Ed’s hair and kiss him softly.

Every kiss has a character. So many are simple, or small, or dutiful, or ordinary—which makes them no less wonderful in their own right, but this…

This one, planted on the opposite side of the spectrum from the hurricane that Ed hurled at him before, is all of the apologies that he can’t put into words, and all the gratitude even further from the capabilities of speech. This is a whisper of the wistfulness; the gentlest impression of the thousand-thousand moments where some minuscule detail of eyes or hair or shoulder slant or commentary or unwitting expression broke another piece off of Roy’s heart with its accidental beauty. This is a breath of all the breathlessness.

He hopes that Ed can hear the way it ends: it is not a question; neither is it a request. No demands. Just acknowledgment, and appreciation, and a glimpse of the worship that Roy’s given up trying to fight.

He doesn’t want the press to become pressure, and—hell. He’s always thrived on the element of surprise. Maybe that’s a mark of weakness when he can’t seem to master any other tactics quite as well, but there’s no time to quibble with it now.

He pulls away cautiously and withdraws his hand from where it had settled in the transcendent silkiness of the soft hairs just behind Ed’s ear. It’s too dark to check for some of the clues he usually relies on, but he watches Ed’s reaction as closely as his damaged eyes allow.

Ed blinks. Then he swallows, audibly.

Then he says, “Oh, fuck _you_.”

“Any time you like,” Roy says.

“Get bent,” Ed says. “You—you’re not—”

Roy’s impulse is to hold his breath. “Not what?”

“ _Sleeping_ ,” Ed says. “Go the fuck to sleep. You have to work tomorrow. We both do. Why are you— _no_. I’m not playing your game. Go to sleep. Tomorrow I’ll kick your ass.”

“I look forward to it,” Roy says.

“Get your eyes checked,” Ed says. “But not now, because now you’re sleeping.”

“Am I?” Roy asks.

“There you fucking go again,” Ed says. “I can’t believe I still put up with this when I’m not getting paid for it anymore.”

“Neither can I,” Roy says.

“The universe is weird,” Ed says. “Go to sleep.”

Perhaps some smoothing-over might not go amiss. “Ed… in all seriousness, I—”

“ _Sleep_ ,” Ed says. With a series of borderline-violent shifting motions, he rolls over, turning his back to Roy again. “Now.”

Roy tries to wait out the silence, but it’s been a long day, and the drifty giddiness in him keeps soaking through his stubbornness until it comes unglued. “Goodnight, Ed.”

“G’night,” Ed says. “Shut up.”

Roy can’t help smiling—just a bit.

  


* * *

  


Sleep draws him out slowly into the oblivion tide. He washes ashore again at some dim, muggy-headed hour on the far side of midnight to find Ed sitting up in the bed beside him. Ed has his knees pulled up to his chest, chin rested on them, left arm wrapped around them, and the cascade of hair makes it impossible to distinguish any of his face in the darkness.

“Edward,” Roy manages with some hoarse remnant of his voice. “Are you—”

“Yeah,” Ed says. “Just… thinking. I keep telling you to try it sometime.”

“You should try sleeping,” Roy says. “It’s all the rage right now.”

Ed snorts. “You’re real funny.”

“I get that a lot,” Roy says. “Sometimes followed by ‘-looking’.”

He can feel more than he can see the glare.

“No,” Ed says, “you don’t.”

Roy can almost touch the frayed ends of the unconscious bliss still slipping away from him: he’s not awake enough yet to dredge up any of the long-buried stories about being the only student in any of his classes with a trace of Xingese descent. He’s not awake enough to determine whether that would be missing the point, anyway.

“You’re so good at telling me to sleep,” he says instead. “You should take some of your own advice.”

“I will,” Ed says. “But I think I need to get through a couple of things first. Just… takes a few minutes. Once I’ve figured ’em out, I’ll be fine. You don’t have to worry about me.”

“Of course I don’t _have_ to,” Roy says. “I also don’t _have_ to breathe, although I suppose I’d start doing it automatically again once I eventually passed out.”

This silence contains a peculiar character that he can’t quite identify.

“Just—go back to sleep,” Ed says. “I’m fine. You’re gonna have to be all clever and whatever shit tomorrow. You need the rest.”

Roy does. He can feel it dragging on him—heavy and insistent; hazily warm and terribly enticing.

“So do you,” he says. The sleepiness makes him foolish—or just too tired to care about what’s reckless and what’s safe. He reaches out and grazes his fingertips up Ed’s arm. “You can still think things over lying down.”

“It’s not the same,” Ed mutters, but he hasn’t retreated out of range, and after a moment of quiet, he sighs and then shifts, settling down on his side. The automail whispers along the sheets before coming to rest between them, and Roy imagines the fingers relaxing like the petals of a silver flower opening to the light. “Happy now?”

“Delighted,” Roy says. “Exuberant. Ecstatic. Rapturous. Positively euphori—”

“Shut up,” Ed says.

“You asked,” Roy says.

“Well, I’m an idiot,” Ed says. “Doesn’t mean both of us have to be.”

“We’re at our truest when we let ourselves be stupid,” Roy says. His traitor hand extends again, grazing over the cool metal of the automail arm folded on top of the bedspread, following its ridges up to brush Ed’s hair back from his face. All this time—all this time spent memorizing the lines of Ed’s body, cataloguing every scar and every shadow, dreaming hopelessly of some sort of world where he might just be allowed to touch—

The craving consumed him, slowly, from within, and now that the barrier of permission has crumbled from where it stayed his hand, he can’t seem to summon anything like resistance.

“I thought you wanted to sleep,” Ed says. His voice doesn’t sound quite steady, but it could be the exhaustion. It could be a lot of things. Roy has no real reason, yet, to believe that it’s the skimming of his fingertips along Ed’s cheekbone that’s unbalancing him like this. “Is philosophizing more important?”

“You’re more important,” Roy says, so at least he’s practicing what he preached. “Is it anything that it might help to talk about?”

Ed swallows audibly again, and then he takes a deep breath and lets it out slowly.

“Nah,” he says. “But—thanks. I guess.”

“Of course,” Roy says.

He tucks a lock of hair behind Ed’s ear and then, speaking very sternly to himself inside of his own head, makes himself withdraw his hand.

“Go back to sleep,” Ed says, softer still. “I’m fine.”

“You don’t have to be,” Roy says. “Not here.”

“I know,” Ed says. “That’s… whatever. Anyway. G’night, asshole. Again.”

“Goodnight, Ed,” Roy says.

  


* * *

  


Despite the outraged outcry from every molecule of his body and every fiber of his being, Roy drags his body out of the bed a few minutes early the next morning. Ever a consummate contrarian, Ed—painted in monochrome by the gray dawn light except for the halo of pale gold, and how could anyone have ever expected Roy to contain this?—cracks an eye open and glowers at him again as he slides out of the bed.

“Good morning,” Roy says, although the scratchiness of his own voice gives away how evidently good it is not. Ed’s growl of a response would confirm it if he’d needed to. “I need to stop by the optometrist’s before I go in. Riza will kill me in cold blood if I beg off of work all day because I can’t read fine print.”

The gold eye assesses him for a moment before Ed buries his face in the pillow, mumbling something unintelligible.

Roy wants, so _fiercely_ , like a signal flare burning white-hot in the center of his chest, to lean over and kiss the top of Ed’s head, the half-exposed ear, the back of his neck, the nearest shoulder—

But it’s too early. It’s too soon. They haven’t categorized any of this yet; nothing has been discussed, and nothing has been defined, and none of it has even been spoken of in daylight.

“I’ll put some more coffee on for you before I go,” Roy says.

The follow-up mumble sounds vaguely positive, so that’s something.

  


* * *

  


He was told on the phone yesterday that it would take them a while to have new lenses ground to the precise specifications of his prescription, but that he was welcome to come by and select a new pair fitted for a generic level of magnification close to what he needs. Since it most likely means fewer and less-severe headaches than he’d suffer unaided, and better reading comprehension to boot, he doesn’t have much of a choice.

It’s only when he’s waiting at the front desk, staring off into space while the receptionist disappears into the back room to find a few choices to offer to him, that he realizes his mistake.

Endorphins are a drug, no two ways about it: he’s been operating under the assumption that there’s any way that this could _work_.

He’s been letting his own brain treat it like a sure thing and a safe bet. He’s been enjoying the hormone high as if he’s the same person that he used to be—as if he’s a human being functional enough to navigate the waters of any relationship at all, let alone one with a person as volatile and vulnerable at turns as Edward Elric. He’s been assuming that it was something more than a passing fancy for Ed, and that it could _ever_ evolve into a sustainable shape. He’s been acting like it’s a good thing.

He’s been acting like it has a chance.

Even if Ed thinks that he wants this—thinks that he wants Roy; wants the man and the mess of him; wants the nightmares and the melodrama and the melancholy and the endless gravel trail towards something like redemption—Roy couldn’t bear to put him through it. Reality has a way of crushing all the delicate things that Ed ever tries to build, and Roy…

Roy is an active volcano. He’s the earthquake and the aftershocks; he’s tidal wave and drought alike. He’s half a dozen plagues and every creature in the night. He’s a forest fire. He’s the end of days.

Even if Ed wants to try his luck, Roy couldn’t sit back and let him hurl himself onto that pyre. Ed is too good for this; too generous, too gentle. Ed should have a quiet life and a love that isn’t bristling with knives. Ed shouldn’t have to burn himself to blistering before he learns that Roy’s too dangerous to touch.

Smothering this before it hurts him is the one kind thing that Roy could give to Ed, after everything that he’s taken away.

It doesn’t matter what Roy thinks. It doesn’t matter what he wants. It doesn’t matter what he feels, closer to the bone and brighter at the core in some moments than anything he’s managed to process in months. This isn’t about him. This is about the right thing, obvious for once. This is about a fleeting chance to seize it in both hands before it slips away.

Ed probably doesn’t really want it anyway.

That’s what he was up half the night thinking about, most likely. Ed’s emotions sometimes bowl him over, yes, but his compass points towards logic underneath. Once he sorts through all the fiddly little feelings, he’ll reach the same conclusion that Roy just did. Roy is past salvaging and beyond salvation. It would only be an exercise in agony for both of them to waste time pretending otherwise.

Roy’s stomach tightens, and his heart twists, but the impact doesn’t even hit him properly. Heartbreak is supposed to _hurt_. That’s how you know that the next part will be healing.

If he can’t even connect with his own emotions, how the hell was he ever meant to make a worthwhile partner for someone as extraordinary as Ed? Stupid thought—stupid dream. Doomed and childish from the start.

At least it kept him warm for a little while.

A hand is holding a little black case out to him. It takes him a moment of blinking to realize that his interim glasses have arrived, and the world has indeed continued turning.

He rallies, recovers, and musters perfect cordiality as he accepts them, pays, marks a bit of small-talk, and then saunters out the door again to head in to Central Command.

It’s for the best. He has to remember that. It’s for the best, and the best is what Ed deserves.

  


* * *

  


After Maes died, he taught himself all-new ways to focus in so hard on the minutiae that the rest of the world ceases to exist. It was the only way to survive, then. He supposes that it’s probably pathetic to need it now—the belated revelation that Ed is, in all the ways that really matter, off-limits and out of his league still stands a far cry from losing one of the pillars of his life overnight. But overkill counts, and he has so many graves to dig—so much to bury; so much to try to forget—

“Sir,” Riza says.

He emerges—wreathed in fog, he fancies—from the depths of a report. The stopgap glasses make it marginally easier to find her in his doorway, but his eyes haven’t quite adjusted to them yet. “Lieutenant?”

“It’s half past one,” she says.

She stands with her arms folded across her clipboard, waiting for him to fill in the blanks.

Lunch hour has come and gone.

Ed has not.

“I see,” he says. It’s insipid, but at least he’s verbal. It could be worse. “Have you eaten yet?”

She shakes her head. Was she waiting for him? She needs to do what Ed did—leave his command; find a place to thrive without constantly propping him up and withering in his shadow.

He plants both hands on his desk to lever himself upright and squares his shoulders. It could be worse.

“Shall we?” he says.


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was like, "WAIT, how are we here already?!", and then I realized we are 100,000 words in, and that's how. XD Sorry this update got a bit delayed! I thought I had time to get through it last night, but I underestimated both how long it was (19K omg, find a comfy chair), and how many little tweaks it needed.
> 
> But it is here! And there is porn! If that's not your thing, I'd recommend reading up until they start shedding clothes, and then make sure to pick back up afterwards if you can, 'cause there's some important stuff at the end. :o

The cafeteria is a nightmare beast of eyes and ears, and the sandwich shop across the street has better fare regardless. The girl behind the counter looks vaguely familiar from prior excursions to this little refuge. Thanks to the late hour, Roy and Riza don’t even have to wait in line, and there’s a window table open.

Once they’ve ordered and settled into the seats, Riza crosses one leg over the other at the knee and looks out at the sidewalk while they wait for their food.

“What are you going to do?” she asks.

“About the Chosen?” Roy says.

She glances at him, one eyebrow arching. “That first.”

“I don’t know,” Roy says. “Or—I don’t know entirely. I know that we’d better keep it very quiet. I think that pushing some more generous immigration policies might be the best counter-maneuver.” The girl at the counter was fool enough to give him a plastic straw in his glass of water, which is alternately filling the positions of a chew toy and a baton. “It would discourage any remaining members who stayed behind rather than joining this particular expedition, in addition to which it would demonstrate rather clearly to whoever’s behind it that their tactics are backfiring. In the end, the only people who get what they wanted are the people whose lives and livelihoods were jeopardized in the first place.”

Riza sits back, tilting her head. “You’re sure that it was instigated by someone on the inside?”

“I can’t prove anything,” Roy says. “But a tiny splinter cell would choose a much larger government target for vengeance—or maximize the civilian casualties by targeting a public place, if what they really wanted was to make a point. A civic building doesn’t make sense from the point of view of the Chosen. I’ve been excavating all of the history I can find about them—there isn’t much, of course, and what there is sounds predictably tainted; but working backwards from the bias… Lovan’s account of events seems reliable. The simplest explanation for them choosing that place at that time is that it benefited the person who gave them all the guns.”

Riza drums her fingertips on the table, which is a much more societally-accepted version of gnawing on a straw. Roy, as always, should take his cues from her. It’s just that his nerve endings feel like severed ropes turned to fuses, dangling in the open air, and the world is a chaos of flying sparks.

On an ordinary day, he wouldn’t feel like this—raw, exposed, unhinged, assailable. On an ordinary day, he’d have control of himself, and he…

There are no more ordinary days.

Not the way there used to be.

There are better days and worse ones, but he will never be the same again.

He has to remember that—he has to _accept_ it. It’s not a prison term that will end someday and release him back to a life like the one he knew—but neither is it a death sentence. He is this, now. This is ordinary. What he does with it is his to decide.

His internal monologue really has started to sound an awful lot like Ed.

“How are you planning to push the policies?” Riza asks.

“You say ‘planning’,” Roy says, “as if I’ve even sat down long enough to order new glasses.”

“You say ‘sat down’,” Riza says, “like someone whose ass wasn’t parked in his chair for five hours straight this morning.”

“I took a coffee break,” Roy says. “And that was…” What was it? “Forms… and… reports… and… something else.” He sits back in his chair, slinging one leg over the other, and folds his arms to complete the pout. “It wasn’t _planning_.”

“All right,” Riza says, mildly, which is how he knows he’s doomed. “Back to the original question, then. I think we’ve covered what you’re going to do about the Chosen. What are you going to do about Ed?”

The pout gives way to a grimace before Roy can stop it. He recovers the veneer of equanimity in a matter of moments, but it’s too late—nothing gets past Riza, and certainly nothing so painstakingly obvious that it might as well be lit up in neon and scattered with sequins for good measure.

“I,” Roy says, “am going to be very straight—” She snorts. “— _forward_ ,” he grinds out, “with him, and… I’m sure he’ll understand. He’s just… projecting. With Alphonse away, and all of his other friends nearly as distant, it’s hardly any surprise that he’s latched onto someone who used to provide him with something like stability, and—”

“Roy,” Riza says.

He is _definitely_ doomed.

“Do you really think,” Riza says, “that Ed would have _moved into your house_ —”

“He hasn’t really,” Roy says. “It’s just the occasional backpa—how do you even know about that?”

“I know everything,” Riza says, so calmly that Roy’s blood runs cold. It’s not as if it wasn’t a fact of his existence, of course, but hearing it spoken aloud is another story—the kind that keeps one up at night beneath the blankets, clinging to a flashlight and whimpering at every little sound. “Which is also how I know that Ed wouldn’t have devoted himself to helping you like this if it didn’t _matter_ to him.”

“He tries to help everyone,” Roy says. “It’s in his nature. He saw me on the ground like a butterfly with both wings in shreds, and his instincts kicked in. That’s all it is.”

Riza’s glare might, he imagines, kill a lesser—or less-accustomed—man. “He does try to help everyone. But he has not, _ever_ , put his entire life on hold, rearranged his schedule, hung off of someone’s every word, brought food and done favors with remarkable regularity, gone to the _opera_ —”

“I’m so lucky you’re on my side,” Roy says, faintly, because he has to say something, or this will go on forever, and he’ll starve.

“Yes,” Riza says. “You are. Did you hear me?”

“He doesn’t know what he’s getting into,” Roy says. 

Riza raises her eyebrows. “Doesn’t he?”

“No,” Roy says. “And I can’t let him do this to himself and find out the hard way just how bad it can be to love someone that you can’t save.”

She looks at him again—for too long, and there’s too much behind her eyes now, and he wishes that he hadn’t spoken, but that’s nothing new.

What’s in her eyes doesn’t look new, either. It looks like an old, tired, familiar sort of hurt.

“Besides,” he says, only a little bit too quickly. “Ed is a young, gorgeous, famous genius with a heart like a goldmine that never stops giving. He’s not going to have any trouble finding someone worthier of his interest.”

“Genius is lonely,” Riza says, turning her gaze out the window again. “As you’ve discovered more than once.”

“I’m not even in the same category as the Elrics,” Roy says.

“No one is,” Riza says. “But at least you know what it’s like.”

“If that’s the allure,” Roy says, “then I’m just a stopgap until Al gets back, and there’s no reason—”

She turns to him again, openly disapproving this time. It’s taken him many years to be able to best the urge to wilt when she levels that look on him.

“Forty-three?” one of the employees behind the counter calls, and not a moment too soon.

“That’s us,” Roy says, as if it’s remotely possible that she’d forget. “Let me just…”

She has repossessed his straw by the time he returns, and is bending it unmercifully between her fingers.

“Don’t look at me like that,” Roy says.

“This is my face,” Riza says.

“It’s for his own good,” Roy says.

“If he’s in a different category,” Riza says, “how can you be so sure that you know what’s best for him?”

Roy sits down and pushes the bag across the table to her. “Would you also like to eat my lunch while you criticize my life?”

“It’s constructive criticism,” Riza says. “Like ‘You have bad taste in sandwiches, so no, thank you.’”

The corners of her mouth twitch up a little at the profundity of the disappointment in his expression, so at least that’s a start.

  


* * *

  


“Do you have any suspects?” Riza asks as they make their way back towards Central Command. Some days, those front steps look far, _far_ too high. Today Roy’s knees start whining well before they’ve reached the sidewalk, but at least his heart doesn’t waver.

“Several,” Roy says. “None of which I can pinpoint one ahead of another. Whoever it was did their homework—it’s difficult enough finding _any_ information on the Chosen at all; I can’t imagine what it must have taken to get in touch with them, and to have earned enough trust to suggest an organized assault on a government building. I’m going to talk to Lovan tonight. There are a lot of unmined details about where they were living and what discussions they had—it seems like they sidelined him deliberately, because they knew that he wasn’t committed to the cause, but anything that he can remember might point us in a clearer direction.”

“Sir,” Riza says, at the same instant that he turns to glance towards motion on the far side of the courtyard, near the entrance to the dorms. “Isn’t that—”

It’s Lovan—as if Roy summoned him with the mere utterance of his name.

Roy did not, however, summon the two uniformed corporals escorting Lovan out the doors—one ahead of him, holding what looks like paperwork; and one behind, guiding him with a firm grip on the handcuffs pinioning his arms behind his back.

Roy doesn’t need the full advantage of Riza’s superior eyesight to pick up the animal panic written in every line of Lovan’s body language, and he doesn’t envy the fact that she can probably see it painted in stark lines of sheer terror on his face. Lovan tries to dig his heels in, tries to pull against the cuffs—but never too hard; never too vigorously; he knows that the guns only stay holstered as long as he stays manageable. He knows what Amestrians are capable of.

He can’t even scream.

Roy is already moving.

“Good afternoon, soldiers,” he calls as he and Riza stride across the yard, attempting to make the desperate haste look casual. “What’s this?”

“Transfer,” the first corporal says, waving the paperwork. He notices the bars on Roy’s shoulders too late and barely swallows a cringe. “Ah—came from the very top, sir.”

Roy can’t ask who. He can’t ask why, or where to. He can’t ask how the person responsible even _found_ his informant—how they knew to look here, why they were willing to dig through the register, why they persisted through the pile of fake identifying information that Roy cooked up and wrote down and signed for through to the last page. He can’t ask how someone got clearance to revoke all of the protections he put in place.

He can’t ask anything, because there isn’t any _time_.

“Good Lord,” he says. “ _Finally_.” He shoots Riza a long-suffering look, and she returns it instantly and adds a beautiful little disapproving shake of her head. “I put that request in first thing this morning. How does anyone ever get anything _done_ around here?”

The corporals have stopped walking. That’s a start. The one in back is hesitating, and the one in front still has a hierarchical faux pas to make up for; Roy’s got him on the ropes.

“We’re going to miss the train, at this rate,” Roy says, stepping forward and gesturing briskly to the corporal holding onto the handcuffs. “Give him here. We’ll have to go straight there. Lieutenant—could you bring the car around?”

“Right away, sir,” Riza says, and she’s off.

Which just leaves him with two startled, bewildered young officers and a petrified captive.

“I—” the corporal in front manages, eyes flicking between the thick central stripe on Roy’s shoulder and the imperturbably calm expression on his face. “You weren’t—I’m afraid you weren’t on the clearance papers, sir, and I… I’m not sure if—”

“I signed for his original use of the space,” Roy says, waving a hand at the papers, which are starting to crinkle where they’re clutched in the boy’s hands. “Page one, I imagine. Do you want me to sign for the release? I suppose that if we’re waiting for the car anyway—here.”

He holds his hand out, and military discipline flouts critical thinking yet again: the boy hands the papers to him immediately, like it’s an instinct, and then winces outright this time.

Smoothly, Roy draws a pen from his breast pocket, clicks the top, and pretends to skim the top page of the stack. “Quarter after two— _hell_ , is it that late? We might just have to take another train; I can’t believe anything ever gets accomplished around here, after all of the bureaucracy it takes… yes, that’s right; destination… perfect.” He scrawls an absolutely unintelligible loopy line at the bottom of the sheet, pockets his pen again, rolls the whole stack up into a tube, and taps it against his palm to demonstrate a balanced combination of indifference and impatience. “I’m going to have to have a word with whoever processed that this morning. Oh—goodness, not you two; you did everything right.” The corporal at the back looks visibly relieved. Roy offers the paperwork back to its owner and reaches his hand out for the cuffs again as he hears the growl of a familiar engine approaching. “I’ll take it from here.”

“Yes, sir,” the boy says, shoulders sagging. “Thank you, sir.”

“Thank _you_ ,” Roy says, gripping the chain on the handcuffs tightly to steady his own hand. “Have a lovely afternoon, boys.”

He doesn’t dare to look Lovan in the eyes as he marches them both down to the curb, where Riza’s kept the car idling. He opens the back door, ushers Lovan in, slams it, and darts around to the trunk. A gesture through the window to Riza makes her open it, and he snatches the hat out of the waiting pile of clothes before slipping into the back seat on the opposite side.

He tosses the hat down onto the seat beside himself as Riza fires the engine and draws them out into the street.

“Let me see?” he says, indicating the cuffs. Lovan has to contort his back to offer them, but at least it’s only the work of a moment to dismantle the mechanism with a touch of alchemy, and then the poor man can sit regularly, massaging at his wrists and looking at Roy like…

Well, per one Jean Havoc, like Roy’s the quickest viper in the whole pit of snakes.

Which isn’t exactly wrong, is it?

“Can you fit your hair under this?” Roy asks, holding the hat out to him next.

Lovan nods, slowly, and coils up his ponytail beneath it, settling the brim low enough to shade his eyes. If anyone happens to be watching the car, happens to recognize Roy—

“That narrows it down,” Roy remarks to Riza. “Someone who outranks me, resourceful enough to find him and smart enough to try to snatch him before he talked.” It’s his turn to wince. “Ah—so to speak. Ah—”

The glimmer of mirth in Lovan’s eyes is so tiny that Roy can’t tell what proportion is sincere, and what’s sardonic. He’ll have to cut his losses there.

“Where were they taking him?” Riza asks.

“The forms didn’t say,” Roy says. “Which I’m sure was no accident, since there wasn’t a single identifying factor on them. Can you imagine what would happen to me if _I_ turned in paperwork like that?”

“You wouldn’t get to the point of turning it in,” Riza says. “I would shoot you first. Where are _we_ taking him?”

“My mother’s secondary place,” Roy says. “I don’t know if the safe-houses are safe. In light of which, we may need to change their name, although ‘houses of questionable safety’ really just doesn’t have the same ring to it.”

The silence from every direction speaks volumes. Riza’s volumes seem a bit more judgmental than Lovan’s; those mostly sound bewildered. Possibly scandalized.

“I’m sorry,” Roy says, which is the truth. “I’m still a little high on adrenaline.” That’s true, too. He pushes his hair back off of his forehead and tries to take a deep breath, which proves difficult with the way his heart keeps rattling around in his chest. “We were very, very lucky just now, and I deeply despise relying on luck.”

“You could’ve fooled me,” Riza says.

“No one’s ever fooled you in your life,” Roy says.

“Is it a right up here?” she asks.

“Left,” he says.

“Right,” she says. “Oh—I mean—yes.”

There is a pause, in which Lovan looks almost— _almost_ —amused.

  


* * *

  


Getting Lovan settled takes several hours—Riza has to go back for his belongings, which were, of course, left at the dorms when the two overeager corporals started manhandling him out for the mysterious transfer; presumably she also lets Roy’s team know that he hasn’t disappeared to play hooky just for fun. When she returns with the car, there’s the matter of Madame Christmas’s icebox being utterly empty, which becomes Roy’s responsibility; and he also makes a stop at the hardware store on the way back from the grocery. The way that Lovan’s eyes light up when Roy staggers into his room, burdened by the awkward weight of a large chalkboard that can be mounted on the wall, makes up for the probable damage to Roy’s vulnerable spine.

He forgot to buy tools, and he hasn’t the faintest idea where his mother stashes hers these days, so he cheats with alchemy—if that’s the appropriate way to describe it; perhaps _shortcut_ is more apt in all the ways that matter—to put it up on the wall.

That’s what sends the sliver of doubt worming into his veins—swimming avidly through him, spreading, multiplying, fishing with its tendrils for everything in him until he can’t breathe for the vise grip it has around his heart.

“Excuse me a moment,” he says as Riza and Lovan unpack the mystifyingly massive box of chalk that he couldn’t resist buying at the store. Neither of them really seems to notice his distress past the distraction, which means that he purchased the correct size after all, regardless of the weird look he got from the cashier.

His lungs can’t hold onto any of the air that he tries to feed them, but he makes it to the telephone without falling on his face, which is more important than a silly thing like oxygenating his own blood. He picks up the receiver and dials, and then he waits, listening to the resonation in his ears as his heart slams itself against his ribs. He watches the clock on the wall opposite—slender black hands creeping towards six.

Ed must be home by now. He stays past five fairly often, but not this late; and his apartment’s close enough to Central Command that he has to have arrived by this time. The cats will be clamoring. Al might call—it’s Friday night, after all, and apparently no wild Xingese nightlife can pull him away from the need to connect with Ed across the distance and the desert, however long it’s been—

The line clicks.

“Elric,” Ed says. He sounds tired and slightly annoyed. He definitively does not sound dead.

Less-definitively, he doesn’t particularly sound like someone who missed stopping by at lunch because something terrible had happened to him, rather than because he was angry.

It’s a cold world full of quicksand, and the night has teeth. Ed has been assaulted twice recently by soldiers with no qualms and plenty of vendettas. Roy had assumed that the lack of contact was personally-motivated, but it had occurred to him, much too late, that there could be a thousand other explanations, all of which ended in blood.

“It’s me,” Roy says. “I just—”

He’s hit the peak of another epinephrine spike, and now he’s hurtling down towards the bone-deep, emptied-out exhaustion of relief. He’s too old to keep doing this, let alone more than once in a single afternoon.

A corollary problem: exhaustion, like many things, love among them, makes him very stupid.

“—wanted to be sure you were all right,” he says.

Waiting out the silence is excruciating, but it’s likely that he deserves it.

“Yeah,” Ed says, slowly, with a trace of caution, like a deer stepping out of the foliage and into the light. “I’m fine. You?”

“There were some unexpected hurdles with my star witness,” Roy says, “but I think we’re through the worst of it.”

He wants to say so much—and so much _more_. He wants to say _Will you let me apologize? Can I bring you dinner? May I touch your hair just one more time before we give up trying, so that I can try to memorize it before I go?_

He can’t say anything—not now. He has no right and no reason to ask for more.

“That’s good,” Ed says, measuredly. “Um—do you—are you almost done, or whatever, or do you need more time? I could… I mean—do you want me to—come over?”

Roy swallows, breathes, swallows again, and resorts to clearing his throat. He has to make himself remember that Ed’s already seen the worst of it—that a little more weakness changes nothing now.

“I’d like that,” he says. It’s the truth, after all. Ed’s fundamental character demands it. “Have you had anything to eat just yet?”

“Nah,” Ed says. “I could make something.”

“Don’t bother,” Roy says. “I’ll pick something up on the way.”

It’s the least he can do. However he handles this, it can’t end kindly.

“Cool,” Ed says. “I’ll wander over that way in a couple of minutes and just move all your stuff around the house until you get there, then.”

“Delightful,” Roy says through the automatic grimace.

Ed snickers. “Glad to be of service. See ya.”

“See you soon,” Roy says, and his heart still trills for it. He can’t differentiate the miseries enough to figure out which one’s the worst, but that has to make the list—he’s still so _happy_ at the prospect of Ed, of getting to be near him, of nothing more or less than time spent in the same physical space.

He hangs up the phone and stands very still, watching the cord where it swings with the leftover momentum, shadow swanning back and forth across the tabletop, like…

Footsteps behind him fire an electric tension through his shoulders even though he knows who they belong to.

“Is everything all right?” Riza asks.

She won’t believe it, but he puts the smile on anyway as he turns. “Of course. How’s our guest settling in?”

  


* * *

  


When they’ve sorted out the remainder of the logistics and shown Lovan how to operate all the locks—and how to defend all the windows, should it come to that—Roy crosses to the significantly-larger-than-life-sized statue of a woodchuck in butler attire waiting by the door. It used to unsettle him as a child until one of his sisters repainted the eyes to be _far_ less eerie: now it makes a reasonable, if utterly incongruous, stand for leaving notes by the door. Theoretically, the silver plate on its raised paw could be used for hors d’oeuvres, but since Roy imagines that any party where that made sense would not be one to attend without first experimenting extensively with drugs that he’s too old for, he thinks it’s better off here. Besides, he found a matching spiral notebook to use for this precise purpose; woodchuck stationery isn’t easy to come by.

_Madame,_ he writes.

_I’m very sorry, and thank you. His name is Lovan, and despite lacking the advantage of verbal communication, he’s really very charming. He is also deeply involved with the incident at the Immigrations building, unless you haven’t heard about the incident at the Immigrations building, in which case absolutely nothing happened, and you shouldn’t worry about it. Please take good care of him; the fate of Amestris and its fine citizens may well rest on his shoulders, etc. etc. and so on. I’ll be by tomorrow to work on that part._

_All my love._

_X_

Riza skims it as he writes, and then she plucks the pen out of his hand and adds, at the bottom, _I endorse none of this. —RH_

Once the obligatory eye-rolling is complete, Roy returns to Lovan’s room and inscribes his home telephone number on the bottom-left corner of the chalkboard.

“Just tap on the mouthpiece if you need anything,” he says, “and I’ll be here as soon as physically possible. ‘Anything’ includes ‘rescue from the girls’ if they turn up.”

Lovan’s eyebrows rise.

“You should leave him a crowbar,” Riza says. “To defend himself.”

“They’re perfectly wonderful,” Roy says quickly. “Just… enthusiastic. We’ll—ah. It’ll be fine.” Time for a characteristically graceful exit. “Goodnight.”

“You haven’t even seen ‘enthusiastic’ yet,” Riza says, trailing him towards the door. “You’re leaving them an attractive, heroic man who _doesn’t talk_. It’s going to be a bloodbath.”

“Ignore her,” Roy calls back in the direction of Lovan’s room. “Everything will be fine.”

He’s trying very hard to believe it.

  


* * *

  


The lights are on in the entryway by the time Roy parks the car. He tries to let all of it slough off of him as he makes his way up the walk—all of the fear, all of the panic, all of the relief. They’re equal enemies to his calm now, and he has to hold himself as neutral as he can. He has to weather this. He has to chart as smooth a course as he’s able to if he wants either of them to make it out of this with wounds that might just heal.

When he opens the door, Ed’s sitting on the floor of the foyer, legs splayed out in front of him—just wide enough apart to imply the feats of flexibility that they both know he’s capable of; just wide enough apart to remind Roy’s miserable brain how violently it short-circuited every time that he saw Ed do the splits.

It’s apparently not the gymnastic potential that’s brought Ed to this position, however: he’s surrounded by pages of newsprint.

“I thought the whole three-different-newspaper-subscriptions thing was overkill,” he says without looking up from the centerfold in his hands, “even for you, but… these really are like three different _events_ , not three different versions of the same one. What the hell?” Before Roy can even make a start on answering that question, Ed folds the page so abruptly that it crumples a bit under the force of the automail, the better to scowl up at Roy. “I hate it when you make sense.”

“Me, too,” Roy says. He holds up the bag he brought. “Kebab?”

Ed’s on his feet almost instantly, but then he bends double to collect the pages, and there is not enough blood circulating through Roy’s brain to fuel speech.

“Cute how you used the singular,” Ed says. “It’s like we’re strangers.”

“I should rephrase that,” Roy says. He lowers the bag so that he can lift it again. “Two-thirds of a rather sizable bag of kebabs?”

Ed’s wolfish grin makes Roy’s meager willpower shudder and begin to fray. “Now we’re talkin’.”

  


* * *

  


Roy musters a few more fragments of resolve after fortifying himself with food. The downside is that reaffirming what he has to do completely kills his appetite.

Ed, unperturbed, continues to inhale kebab with reckless abandon as Roy toys with the corner of his napkin and searches its sauce-streaked depths for a well of perfect words. Surely they exist. Surely he can find them. Surely if he utters them in the right tone, in the right order, at the right intervals, it won’t have to _hurt._

It’s not himself he’s worried about. That’s the worst part, really. Wasn’t he capable of towering selfishness once? Didn’t preservation of his own interests, of his own _dignity_ , supersede everything else not so many years ago?

He supposes that it all changed with the war, and with Maes, and with Riza, and with everything that he learned in the wrong ways, with sand in his throat. If only that had been why he didn’t speak out. If only he’d been as strong as Lovan, and as resilient, and brave enough still to do it again.

He has to be brave now. He owes that much—to Ed, and to Ishval, and to himself. Every time that he’s capable of it; every time that it wouldn’t ruin him, he has to make the harder choice.

He draws a deep breath, and then he clears his throat. It still tastes like the desert, sometimes.

“I think perhaps,” he says, keeping his voice soft and his eyes on the tabletop, “we should talk about—”

“Yeah,” Ed says with his mouth full. He swallows, loudly. Roy sneaks a glance, and he’s grimacing. “Sorry.”

Roy… blinks.

“About ditching you,” Ed says. “At lunch. I should’ve… called, or something. Sent a note. Smoke signal. Semaphore. Whatever. It was rude as hell. And I’m sorry. I was just—thinking. A lot. And I sort of needed to be alone to do some of it.”

Roy takes a breath and tries at a smile.

“That wasn’t what I meant,” he says. “And you don’t have to be—sorry, I mean. I don’t hold it against you.”

“Oh,” Ed says. He sits back, grinning like a jackal, folds his arms, and tosses his head. “Well, in that case, I take it back, and I’m not fuckin’ sorry at all.”

“Thank goodness,” Roy says. “I was worried.”

Ed smirks for a few seconds before the eyebrows start to rise. “What is it you wanna talk about, then?”

Roy extends one hand between them, and it doesn’t tremble. At least he has that.

“This,” he says. Ed’s eyes narrow. “Us.”

“Not much to talk about,” Ed says.

The part of Roy that watches his own experiences from a distance, like it stands on the far side of a wall of frosted glass, is glad for the rest of him—glad that his heart drops; glad that his guts twist; glad that his fingers curl on the tabletop. Glad that he can still feel anything at all.

“If we both want it,” Ed goes on, apparently oblivious to the physical signs of Roy’s imminent destruction, “then we should do it.”

Roy’s purportedly capable brain grinds to a screeching halt.

The room actually seems to tilt a little.

That was not—

That was, quite simply, _not_.

Wait.

But then—

Then what the hell was all the _thinking_ for if not to carry Ed’s intellect to the obvious solution?

“We can’t pretend like all of that didn’t happen,” Ed is saying. “We might as well make the most of it. And if it—y’know—changes things, changes… this—” He gestures between them, in a mirror image of Roy’s motion from moments before. “Then… we’ll… figure that out when we get there. Whatever.”

Roy flattens his hands on the tabletop before they can betray him. His heart pounds in his ears, in his throat, behind his eyes. “You… want to.”

Ed watches him too-closely. “If you do.”

Roy attempts at a smile, although it feels slightly weak. “Ed, what do _you_ want?”

Predictably, Roy supposes, Ed sets his jaw and scowls. “You know what I want. I shoved it in your face yesterday and never gave you a chance to argue.” He wets his lips with his tongue, eyes darting away from Roy as he works through the next words to speak, and Roy has been ruined for a long, long time. “I just—I know it’s a terrible idea in a lot of ways. But sometimes those go so far into terrible that they cross through onto the other side and end up brilliant, and—I mean, shit, I’ve always wondered how much of that reputation you really live up to anyway. Now’s as good a time as any to find out.”

There are better times—or there were. There would have been.

But this is the time they’ve got.

“Parts of it are exaggerated,” Roy says, slowly, still _reeling_ , “but parts of it are… not. I’m not sure if there’s a rating survey yet.”

Ed raises an eyebrow, settling one elbow on the back of his chair, which extends his torso in a way that kindles something in Roy’s stomach before he has a chance to fumble for control again.

“You’d be surprised,” Ed says. “But these days, I think that three-quarters of the ones who used to come back bragging must’ve been full of shit. In all the time I worked with you, I never saw you _actually_ get cozy with a girl. At least not one who wasn’t an informant, and those don’t count.”

“It’s all part of the game,” Roy says.

“I know,” Ed says. He tilts his head, and the tendons in his neck stand out, and _God_ — “Took me a while, but eventually I caught up and got wise.” He tips his head back; his ponytail whispers over his shoulder, and the gold positively _shimmers_ in the light as it slides down his back. “You’re good at it. The game. I could see that from the first day. Just didn’t realize how big a game it was.”

Roy knows the things he needs to say, but when he reaches for them—for any iteration of the words that he practiced over and over until they felt wooden in his mouth—they slip right through his fingers. Sheer defiance. Ed would be proud.

He can _hear_ them, but they won’t be spoken. They don’t belong to him anymore, or perhaps he doesn’t belong to them.

He has to stop this. He has to do something. He knows he does.

“You’re not part of it,” he says, and it comes out even softer than he intended. Those are not the right words. Not the kind ones. Not the ones that will save them both. “You know that—I hope you know that. This isn’t a game. You’re not.”

Ed half-smiles.

“I don’t even care,” Ed says. “At this point, I mean. I just… shit. If it’ll make both of us happy, even just for tonight, then—life’s crap, and it’s over before you know it, and I don’t _care_ , Roy. I don’t care if it’s a little fake.”

“It’s not,” Roy says. The rest of it carves its way out of him before he can help it. “The last few weeks, with you, are the truest I have been in a very, very long time.”

The half-smile spreads to three-quarters.

And then it tilts into a smirk.

Ed shoves his chair back—but only after he’s planted both hands against the edge of the table and set his shoulders to push himself away from it. The split-second’s warning gives Roy time to brace himself for the unholy scrape of the chair legs on the floor, which allows him to suppress the urge to flinch.

But forcing himself to release the tension in his spine takes up several precious seconds, and by the time he’s spent them, Ed has rounded the corner of the table and is _here_.

Roy slides his chair back slowly, and a fragment of him wants to run—to bolt out of the room before he can foul it up; to retreat while it’s still a pleasant might-have-been—

Except—

Except that Ed already owns him. Ed is steel and iron at the core, and Roy can’t fight the magnetism of him; not now. Never for long.

Ed has his arms folded and his eyebrows arched. Roy lifts both hands and—carefully, so carefully, like Ed is glass instead of metal and muscle and spirit and spite—sets them on Ed’s hips.

They feel like they fit there.

Roy looks up into the molten-gold eyes, and for once he can’t read them.

“Do you think we’re going to be brilliant?” Roy asks him, far too late. “I’m not sure I’m capable of brilliance anymore.”

“I keep telling you,” Ed says, leaning in, eyelashes dipping, and slides his left hand up over Roy’s collarbone and then along his neck— “I don’t _care_.”

_You should,_ Roy wants to tell him. _You should get out now, while you still can, while it’s still simple, while it’s easy, while we’re both all right_ —

Roy presses his thumbs into the hollows of Ed’s hipbones and meets Ed’s mouth with his.

This is a mistake. He wants to believe that it’s too late to stop it—that it’s too late to change his mind. He wants to believe that he never had a choice. He wants to believe that it’s inevitable.

It’s not.

But he’s too weak.

And Ed’s too beautiful.

And kisses like this—slow and deep and thorough and deliberate—are few and far between, and life is a long string of miseries, and Ed deserves to _know_ how utterly extraordinary he is, whether or not Roy can deliver any sort of recompense past that.

This is a dance that he knows so well that he can’t stumble.

With any luck, of course, before the night is over, he’ll have made _Ed’s_ knees go out from under him more than once, but that’s another matter.

At the moment, one of Ed’s knees—the right—has hiked itself up onto the chair, flush with Roy’s thigh, so that Ed can climb up over his lap, and that—

Is making things difficult. Things like thinking, and breathing, and remembering how to sweep someone off of their feet before they have a chance to protest.

Roy smoothes his hands up Ed’s back, fingers spread wide, until the left one grazes the hard edge of the automail port, and the right slides over a shoulder-blade.

He opens his eyes a sliver the next time that their mouths part and searches Ed’s face. Staying focused on the eyes and the eyebrows and the angle of Ed’s mouth, rather than its dizzyingly tantalizing redness from the recent attention, requires an immense amount of willpower.

“This is what you want?” he asks—one more time. The first one-more-time, at least; he expects that he won’t be able to hold back several additional one-more-times after this.

“You mean _you_?” Ed asks. He curls his right hand into the front of Roy’s shirt and delves the left into the hair at the back of Roy’s neck. Pinned and pinioned; no escape. Roy doesn’t want one, and yet there’s a part of him that’s terrified—a part of him that balks against containment, strains against the trajectory of the moments unfolding, regardless of how much he craves another taste of Ed. “Yeah. It’s about damn time, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” Roy breathes into the minuscule space between them. “In light of which, I think we had better do this properly.”

Ed raises his eyebrows and bites down on his bottom lip. “What the hell is ‘properly’?”

“On a horizontal surface, at the very least,” Roy says, drawing both hands up Ed’s sides so slowly again that he wrings out a shiver that resonates through them both. “I can hardly regale you with the full extent of my talents in a chair.”

“I’ll show you _hardly_ ,” Ed mutters, but before Roy can snicker, Ed’s incomparable ass lands in his lap, and that—

The cheeky grin makes it a dozen times worse. Ed knows exactly what he’s doing, and exactly where they’re headed.

He does—want it, want this, want _Roy_. For all that it may crash and burn tomorrow, right now it’s just the burning—just gasoline in every vein; and Ed, pure flame.

“Bedroom,” Roy gets out. “If you don’t move, I’m going to carry you.”

“Like _fuck_ you are,” Ed says, but he scrambles off and starts for the stairs so hastily that it’s clear that he hasn’t taken anything like offense.

Even with his blood alight, Roy’s hands keep shaking. He stands, cautiously, waits to see that his knees will hold him, draws a deep breath to fortify himself, and squares his shoulders.

This part he knows. This he can do. Tonight—for a few spare hours; for as many of them as he can grasp between his hands—he’s going to do everything in his considerable power to make Ed feel the way he ought to. He’s going to do his damnedest to make Ed believe that the old guilts and the shadows of the failures, the faults and the near misses, can’t dim his light; that the bygone ghosts can’t touch him. He’s going to try to make Ed feel like he’s every iota as amazing as he _is_.

A substantial proportion of success is rooted in attitude, which Roy knows quite well that he can deliver. It’s in the shoulders and the hips—a full-scale saunter, so leisurely that the movement of his body would look vaguely lascivious even if he wasn’t raking his eyes up and down Ed’s form where Ed stands poised halfway up the stairs, turned back to wait for him.

“Unbelievable,” Ed says, skipping up the last of the steps. He whirls on his heel on the top landing and levels an irritated look on Roy again. “Could you move _any_ slower?”

“I don’t recommend challenging me,” Roy says, dragging his fingertips up the banister—making abstract, wavy lines, dipping one finger and then two, holding eye contact with Ed the entire time as he caresses the railing with an unmistakable intention.

Ed swallows, works his jaw, and narrows his eyes. “Well—I don’t recommend making me wait for sex. Are you procrastinating? On _this_? I mean, I knew it was pathological, but—”

Roy lets his fingertips linger on the curve around the corner of the banister, making his way up the last few steps no faster than the first. “Have you never heard of delayed gratification, my dear?”

Ed drapes himself over the banister, arms dangling, and adds a pained expression to reinforce the melodrama. “Have you never heard of me dyin’ over here?”

He watches out of the corner of his eye as Roy approaches, but he doesn’t shift away—Roy continues to maintain the simmering eye contact as he sidles in close. Just as he comes near enough that Ed will feel the heat radiating off of his skin, he reaches out and grazes his left hand down Ed’s left arm—and smoothes his right over Ed’s arched back, down his spine, to curl all five fingers into the meat of his ass.

He leans in to breathe hot against the side of Ed’s throat just as a devastatingly adorable half-stifled squeak escapes it.

“I promise you,” Roy says, “that I will make it worth the wait.”

“You fuckin’ _better_ ,” Ed chokes out.

Aligning his body against Ed’s put him in the perfect position to transition to wrapping his arm around Ed’s shoulders, guiding him upright and across the hall. He slides his arm down until it’s draping around Ed’s waist instead, hooking his thumb into the top hem of Ed’s tight black jeans, and spends the two-step moment between denim scraping his fingertips and having to elbow the bedroom door open contemplating just how damn lucky he is.

His prospective partner isn’t exactly waltzing in step with him just yet, but given that Ed could suplex him without batting an eyelash if he didn’t like the direction that they were headed—and given that verbalizations of Ed’s affection tend to involve loud and foully-worded denials—the mild resistance and the suspicious expression are probably positive signs.

Roy draws Ed over to the bed, lifts his hands to Ed’s biceps—one warm, one cold, both tensed in what he hopes is a fervent sort of anticipation—and pushes gently until Ed takes the hint and settles on the edge of the mattress.

“If you say ‘sit’, I’m gonna kill you,” Ed says. “Messily.”

Roy trails a fingertip across Ed’s collarbones, then up his throat, then underneath his jaw to tilt his head back ever so gently.

Then Roy smirks and turns on the velvet voice.

“How about ‘stay’?” he asks.

Ed makes a slightly strangled noise. It looks like he’s fighting his own eyelashes, which are trying to dip to leave just a sliver of gold on display.

Roy bends to lean in close again—close enough to breathe against Ed’s ear; close enough that the wispy pale hairs along Ed’s hairline tickle at his cheek; close enough to lower his voice until it’s barely a whisper.

“How about ‘roll over’?” he asks.

This fraction of a sound bears a strong resemblance to a growl.

Which is fitting, but Roy likes his esophagus better when it’s attached to him than he thinks he’d like it bloodied in Ed’s teeth, which is where this metaphor may take him if he doesn’t watch himself.

“Forgive me,” he says, punctuating it with a soft impression of a kiss grazed against the shell of Ed’s ear.

“ _Make_ me,” Ed mutters.

Roy draws back so that Ed can fully appreciate the next smirk, which is a particular masterpiece. “My pleasure.”

Ed hitches a breath in. He still doesn’t seem to have his eyelids under control yet. Roy tries not to preen. “You got a lot of shit to make up for right now, asshole.”

“As always,” Roy says before he can help himself. Another impulse ripples through him—hot and heady, strong enough that he can tell from the first wash of adrenaline that he can fight this one, but he can never hope to win.

He didn’t especially want to, anyway.

Roy hooks one arm around Ed’s shoulders again and slips the other beneath Ed’s knees—so swiftly that Ed half-flails, but the startlement prevents much further protest—lifts him up, and tosses him further up onto the bed.

“Get _fucked_!” Ed gasps out, scrabbling to find leverage among the bedclothes, but tonight Roy’s earning all those accolades about how quick he can be in the midst of a conflict: he climbs up onto the mattress, crawling over Ed before there’s time to flee and pinning Ed’s metal wrist beneath his hand. He delves the other into Ed’s rapidly-tangling hair, curls his fingers tight, and tugs.

“That is,” he says, “precisely my intention.”

The sound that escapes Ed’s throat tends more towards laugh than snarl, but it bears quite a bit of both.

“Edward, my dear boy,” Roy says, reveling—momentarily; he can’t afford to waste much time on triumph—in the way the lilt of the syllables and the deliberate employment of Ed’s full name make him bite down hard on his bottom lip, and his hips hike up; “you started it.”

“I fucking did fucking _not_ ,” Ed wheezes out, reaching up to push, extremely ineffectually, at Roy’s chest. “I just—I barely even—I _told_ you it wasn’t a big—thing—”

Roy leans in and kisses, long and lingeringly, at the hollow where his throat meets his collarbones.

“But it is,” he says. “And I’m going to prove it to you.”

Ed writhes, but he doesn’t pull away. If he wanted out—if he wanted this to stop—there would be metal-finger bruises up and down Roy’s skin by now. He knows that. He has to trust that Ed knows when and how to tell him _no_ , even at a time like this—even with both of them marinating in the hormone rush, dizzy from the sparks sizzling at the end of every nerve.

“You don’t have to prove anything,” Ed says through gritted teeth, eyes squeezing shut as Roy draws his free hand over the nearest hipbone and starts pushing Ed’s shirt up past it. “You don’t—owe me—jackshit. You don’t—this isn’t about— _me_ —”

“It is,” Roy says. He shifts down so that he can kiss Ed’s abs as he reveals them, which makes a hundred-thousand of his most treasured fantasies come true at once. “It’s about you, and what you want, and what you like; and it’s about the fact that you’re what _I_ want.”

There’s a reedy undertone to Ed’s laugh that he’s not sure he likes, but it could just be the way that Ed’s straining underneath his hands and quaking slightly under the attention.

Roy has to wonder—how much has Ed done with others? He implied that there had been a few, but how far has he gone? What were they like? How did they treat him? Did they focus on him like this—like he’s the only thing left in the vast entirety of the known universe, and has always been the only part of it that mattered?

Or was it quick and dirty and sad and shameful, and Ed walked away every time blaming himself for being inadequate or unattractive; and on the other side of Central, Roy felt his heart plummet and never knew why?

No. That’s too fatalistic even for him. They’ve always been tied together, but it wasn’t like _this_ until Ed moved himself in and unpacked his life and his psyche and made this place as much his home as it was ever Roy’s.

On second thought—despite the fact that even the first was a challenge with his mouth hovering over the slowly-revealed and utterly incomparable expanses of Ed’s skin—it’s absurd of him to cast himself like some kind of singular genius. He cannot possibly be the only man in Central City who has ever noticed Ed—noticed, and memorized, and pined over, and let himself be drawn into like a willing moth, wings quivering. He cannot possibly be the only one who has recognized that Ed’s momentary interest, let alone his allowances, are a gift to unwrap slowly and with no small amount of awe. He cannot be the only one who has prostrated himself for Ed’s trust—any part of it anywhere, but especially the piece of it that matters here—because he understands its value, and its rarity, and what it will permit him to become a part of.

The the bottom line, in any case is that he’s the one here _now_ , regardless of who came before and what they offered. He’s going to give Ed the best that he can—the most that he can. He’s going to give Ed everything that he’s capable of. If the standards from before are sky-high, he’ll have to jump them; if they’re pathetic, then he has his work cut out for him demonstrating just how ludicrously ungrateful the others were for their good luck.

He’s pushed the shirt high enough to reveal the lowermost curve of the automail port, and Ed’s body stills. That could mean a lot of things, not all of them negative. Roy should stop assuming, stop expecting, stop aggrandizing himself like some kind of hero who’s the first to see Ed in the right light. That’s never been true, and it’s never been important. What matters is now.

Now, he kisses right along the edge of the steel, dragging his mouth over the pearled-pink lines of the scar tissue, and releases his grip on Ed’s metal wrist so that he can thread their fingers together instead. The metal’s chilly, but their hands _fit_.

It’s a bit too romantic, for Ed, most likely—it’s almost too sappy for Roy, this early on, but Ed is not a diversion, which flings the rulebook out the window, actively on fire.

Roy doesn’t imagine that he’ll miss it very much.

He does imagine that he will miss the soft noises of reluctant approbation that keep escaping Ed’s mouth on the tail end of every breath; and the slow arch of Ed’s spine off the mattress as Roy’s ministrations take him higher up Ed’s torso; and the way that the steel hand tightens around Roy’s until Roy’s fingertips tingle. Roy would give up every ounce of blood for this; he hardly needs his circulation now. As long as it sustains him long enough to see this through.

Regrettably, physics and anatomy together dictate that he must extract his fingers from where they’re knitted up with Ed’s before he can peel Ed’s shirt the rest of the way off of him, and between the increasingly urgent, gut-throbbing need to appreciate every single square inch of Ed’s skin and the sheer heat radiating off of it, neither of them has much choice in the matter unless they’d like to court spontaneous combustion.

With all of Ed’s upper body laid bare before him, Roy pauses to spare a moment for what was, previously, just another beautiful idiosyncrasy of the topography—but which, with a slightly clearer head, looks like it was a fairly serious injury at the time.

He traces a fingertip lightly around the jagged circumference of the large starburst of a scar low on Ed’s left side, rubbing again at the opposite hipbone with his unoccupied hand, and raises his eyebrows.

“This one looks like a story,” he says.

“Okay,” Ed says, more than a bit faintly. He blinks at Roy, and then up at the ceiling, and his chest hitches with a breath. “There was stabbing. I fixed it. The end. Now will you _fuck_ me?”

Roy has one knee planted on either side of Ed’s thighs, which is the perfect vantage for easing himself down far enough to leave very little of his intention unexplained. “Is that what you want?”

Ed’s hands snap up so that he can smack both of them rather violently against his face. “ _Mustang_ , I _know_ you’re not stupid.”

“Thank you,” Roy says.

The growl returns to the back of Ed’s throat, and he parts his fingers enough to glare. “Which means you’re being a fuckin’ tease on purpose, which is _worse_.”

“I think that’s a subjective judgment,” Roy says. He settles a little on Ed’s lap—unnecessarily, at that; he mostly just wants his heat and hardness to be still more unmistakable. Anticipation is half of the battle, and he intends to win.

Evidently, Ed hasn’t caught on to the glory of agonizingly slow foreplay just yet, since he hisses through his teeth for a second before following up with a “Fuck your subj—” that derails the instant that Roy starts unbuttoning his rather neglected uniform shirt.

“Let me show you something,” Roy says, perhaps a touch unnecessarily, but he’s rarely been accused of saying too little.

Ed makes a faint impression of a noise that might be in the extended family of a laugh. “Is it your dick? ’Cause otherwise—”

Roy parts the two sides of his shirt to display the snarl of equally impressive scar tissue on his own skin. It’s given him an entirely new appreciation of Ed’s stoicism over these past few years—the nerves are long since dead, so _it_ can’t hurt, but the way the other skin has to stretch around it, and the aches that it pushes through the rest of him as he tries not to twist it wrong, make him wonder at the way that Ed never once complained about the pain of his shoulder or his leg.

Splinters? Devastating. Papercuts? The veritable end of the world. But Roy never once heard a whisper about the automail or the agony that must have surrounded it. He knows that that’s not a coincidence.

“Huh,” Ed says, up on his elbows again, head tilted as he examines it with the same bright-eyed, single-minded focus he applies to everything. “Al said it was impressive.” His cheeks darken, and his eyes widen perceptibly, and then he scowls. “I mean—not that he was—it just—came up in conversation. Y’know. Like these things… do. Because—they do. That was ’cause Lust stabbed you, right?”

“Yes,” Roy says. “For once, not as a euphemism. Is ‘impaled’ more correct when it goes all the way through?”

Ed presses his lips together and swallows most of a laugh, although the last of it slips out despite him. “You’re—not helpin’ your case. But—yeah. I think. And me, too. With the impaling. And you cauterized it?”

Of course they’re having this conversation with Roy straddling Ed’s thighs, Ed half-naked and Roy well on his way to follow suit, and that’s the part Ed’s interested in.

“I did,” Roy says. “It hurt.”

“I bet,” Ed says. He blinks, and then he smirks, and then he reaches up and tugs on one of the loose tails of Roy’s shirt, which is still hanging open. “Hey, weren’t we in the middle of something?”

“Now that you mention it,” Roy says, rolling his shoulders expertly to shrug it off, “I believe you’re right.”

He does more than just believe: he shifts back, nudging his shirt off of the mattress so that it will crumple somewhere on the floor until he cares a whit for it again, and applies his mouth to the tantalizing line of Ed’s skin directly above the waist of his jeans. When he’s managed, with a combination of soft breaths and warm tongue, to start Ed writhing underneath him, he sets down his next card.

“Roll over,” he says.

Ed works his jaw for two full seconds before he speaks. “Why?”

“Because I want you to,” Roy says, massaging at his hips again. “And because you want you to, even if you don’t know it yet.”

“That sounds like some politician bullshit,” Ed says.

“Perhaps,” Roy says. “But I’ll make it worth your while.”

Ed breathes another half a laugh. “I bet you say that to all your possible constituents.”

“Only the ones I intend to sleep with,” Roy says.

Ed eyes him. “So… all your possible constituents.”

Roy has to bite down hard on his lip to stop himself from laughing. “That—is not precisely what—no. Do you know how long that would take?”

“At the rate you’re going right now?” Ed says. “Or if you were a normal fucking person who didn’t take people to bed and then _talk_ at them for half an hour before you got anywhere?”

“It hasn’t been half an hour,” Roy says.

“You’re gettin’ close,” Ed says.

Roy lays a hand over his heart and attempts to look wounded. “Are you counting?”

“Might be,” Ed says. “You think maybe you should get to the goddamn point sometime this century just in case?”

“I was trying,” Roy says. “Once upon a halcyon time. Roll over.”

Ed glowers.

Roy blinks at him, as winsomely as possible. “…please?”

Ed glowers harder. “What’re you gonna do if I say ‘no’?”

“Respect your decision,” Roy says. The glower vanishes into wide-eyed surprise. “With,” Roy says, leaning down to run a knuckle gently underneath the line of Ed’s jaw, savoring the shape of it, “an indescribable amount of regret. But it’s up to you.”

“Yeah?” Ed says, slowly.

“Never doubt that,” Roy says.

Ed watches him as he sits back again, trying to keep his face completely neutral as he waits this one out. He meant what he said, and he doesn’t want to influence the choice—Ed’s spent far too much of his life doing what he believes is best for other people. The last thing Roy wants is for him to go along with Roy’s suggestions at a time like _this_ just to avoid creating conflict.

Roy earns the suspicious eye for several more seconds—perhaps not so many as it feels like; perhaps just a few of them, stretched to their limit, lined up one after another until they feel like a substantial sliver of eternity.

“Fine,” Ed says. “Since you won’t shut up about it. This had better be _good_.”

“Trust me,” Roy says before he can help himself.

“Can it,” Ed says, so at least one of them has retained his brain.

Roy wasn’t expecting to keep his long in any case: Ed wriggles partway out from under him, glares one last time, and then deftly flips his body over to display his back.

Words cannot do justice to the first instant of it—or the second, or the third, or any of the ones that follow. The exit wound from his stabbing incident settles low by one hip like a little mangled flower; his spine curves like a drawn bow; his remaining shoulder-blade shifts underneath his skin like the intimation of a wing; the silver automail gleams opposite; and his hair dances everywhere around them as he tosses his head—

And his _ass_. Oh, God. Roy does not believe in deities; he does not believe in justice; he does not believe the universe is kind.

But just this once…

Just this once, he thinks that there may be some doubt about the world’s inclination to be actively good. Ed’s ass speaks to such extremebenevolence that Roy’s not sure how else to explain it.

Fortunately, he doesn’t have to: actions are a language on their own, after all, and easing both hands under Ed’s hips and tugging upward makes for an unmistakable hint. In an unprecedented minor miracle that Roy can only attribute to the borderline fantastical holiness of the larger moment, Ed _takes_ said hint, scoots his knees up, and hikes his ass into the air.

Roy nearly sees stars.

Then he sees Ed’s ass again, which is better than a hundred-thousand constellations splayed out in the sky.

He does his damnedest to convey that as he braces his hands on the bed to either side of Ed’s shoulders this time—and then raises one again to sweep the hair carefully off of the back of his neck, exposing the vertebrae all the way to Ed’s hairline to be thoroughly kissed.

Roy presses his mouth to them one at a time, making his way down as slowly as he can stand—which appears to be about as slowly as Ed can handle, based on the way that he starts to shiver; and the fact that even from where Roy is attending the small of Ed’s back, he can hear the gritting of teeth again.

“Relax,” he murmurs into Ed’s skin, trying to breathe warmth onto the nearest straining muscle to encourage it.

Ed drops his head, panting openly, which sends a blistering spate of lightning through Roy’s nerves all at once.

“If I turn into a _puddle_ ,” Ed says, “I am not gonna get fucked. Because you can’t fuck a puddle. Can’t fuck liquid at all, probably. Never tried. Shut the fuck up. Just—would you quit _teasing_?”

“This isn’t teasing,” Roy says. “This is riling you up.”

“There is _no_ functional fucking difference between those two things,” Ed snarls, “and I got a metal knee _real_ close to your balls if you wanna argu—”

Roy shifts his weight back, sitting on his heels, to free his hands of his own weight—the better to smooth them over the curve of Ed’s ass excruciatingly slowly and every bit as reverently as it deserves. Then he leans in and favors it, denim notwithstanding, with an equally attentive assortment of lingering, meaningful kisses as he did Ed’s spine.

“Fuck,” Ed chokes out.

“Precisely,” Roy says.

“ _Fuck_ ,” Ed says.

Roy drags his fingertips down the backs of Ed’s thighs and then back up. “Mm,” he says, which is as much reaction as it is segue, and as much segue as it is provocation. “You make a convincing case.”

“You’re not making much of one,” Ed says, arching his back, and Roy has to bite down on a groan.

“Forgive me,” Roy says. “I’ve been a bit distracted.”

Ed scoffs—weakly, but definitely deserving of some credit. “Always with the—excuses. You memorize a whole book of ’em when you were a kid or something?”

“What a shameful prospect,” Roy says, reaching around to drag his fingertips down along Ed’s sternum, slowly, until he reaches the fly of Ed’s jeans. He does not miss the way that Ed hisses a breath out through clenched teeth as Roy toys with the button. “I would never sink so low as to borrow other people’s excuses when I can come up with an endless supply of my own.”

He undoes Ed’s jeans, which reduces Ed’s intended response—presumably about the suspicious frequency with which Roy has demonstrated incomparable laziness—to a bit of sputtering. Roy tries not to smirk too broadly as he palms Ed’s cock, coaxing it up from half-hardness until Ed lets his head fall again, panting softly, and his hair shimmers on the sheets. There’s nothing to prove now, no matter how tempting it is to revel in the smugness just a touch.

Besides: his time is better spent on the task at hand—specifically, the one at Roy’s left, since that’s the one free to begin drawing Ed’s jeans and boxers together down to reveal the unfettered, uncensored, indescribable beauty of Ed’s bare ass.

Roy savors it slowly. He’ll only be able to experience this for the first time once—it’s possible he’ll only _ever_ be able to experience it once, depending on how well Ed takes to the rest of this; he can’t presume anything at this point. It hardly matters. This is the sort of gut-scorching, throat-closing, skin-prickling glory that lasts a lifetime.

It’s better than he imagined.

He’s not sure how, but he’s not in the habit of questioning miracles.

He carves another trail of long, lingering kisses down along the curve, and Ed makes an indistinguishable sound—but it bears more than a hint of a groan, and that’s enough to send another spark of eager lightning down Roy’s spine.

“God,” Roy manages, and his voice emerges with a tremble in it this time, and he hopes that Ed understands the sacrifice in that—he hopes that Ed understands that even now, an openness this complete feels like prying his ribcage apart in the middle and distributing a dozen knives. “You are… so extraordinary.”

“Don’t be stupid,” Ed says, albeit somewhat raggedly.

“I’ll be stupid if I want to,” Roy says. He tightens his tunneled hand around Ed’s cock and strokes so slowly that it wrings an unmistakable whine out of Ed’s throat. “My house, my bed, my stupidity. Tough cookies, my dear.”

The slightly strangled laughter is, like everything preceding, mind-meltingly hot. It’s Ed. It must just be Ed.

Roy has to wrangle his way back into something like control of this situation; if he simply unravels—

Well. That’s not an option that he wants to contemplate, so it’s not an avenue they’ll be exploring.

He tips Ed over again, flipping him onto his back on the mattress; the beautiful hair swings, cascades, sparks in the light some more; Roy’s stomach tightens until it’s just a pulsing point of searing white light burning, slowly but surely igniting every inch of him.

He leans in and applies his capable mouth to Ed’s throat, to his jaw, to the vulnerable softness of the skin beneath his ear—

“What’s so stupid?” Roy asks him. “How much I like your ass? You have the finest one I’ve had the pleasure of examining in many years. I can’t help appreciating art.”

“Not—that,” Ed gets out, arching his back, grasping at Roy’s shoulders—the automail’s so cold still; they’ll have to fix that, won’t they? “I mean—that’s—weird, but—” Roy sweeps his right hand down Ed’s chest again so that it can reprise its previous position favoring his cock, and Ed grinds his teeth. “It—it’s—stupid—that—you like— _me_ —enough to—that we’re _here_ , and—”

Roy sits back and lets both of his hands go still, waiting until Ed swallows the next syllable and looks up into his eyes.

“There is nothing stupid,” Roy says, “about liking you.”

Ed eyes him. “There’s plenty stupid about stopping in the middle of sex to argue about it.”

Roy leans down and kisses the tip of his nose. “You started it.”

This time, as he draws back, Ed is staring at him incredulously, looking the slightest bit betrayed.

Roy forces his heart to slow down before it can work its way up to a wild crescendo. “What’s wrong?”

“You’re confusing as _hell_ ,” Ed says. “You just—you go back and forth between all these different parts of yourself so fast that I don’t know how you haven’t torn yourself to pieces keeping up.”

Roy smiles. “How do you know I haven’t?”

Ed’s face contorts—more grimace than scowl, though it’s a bit of both, and there’s quite a lot of pain in it.

“Damn it,” Ed says. “I know. I know, just—” He tilts his head back, squeezes his eyes shut, sighs, and tries to grin. “Weren’t we in the middle of something?”

“As long as you haven’t changed your mind,” Roy says, ducking down to graze his mouth along the collarbone not encumbered by metal and a bolt, “in light of how remarkably counterproductive I can be—”

“Yeah, right,” Ed says, and the flicker of amusement at the corners of the grin now sends a trill of relief through Roy. “I’m not dumb enough to turn you down just because you’re bein’ weird.”

“That is very encouraging news,” Roy says, looking at him again, “given the frequency of my weirdness.”

Ed bites his lip, and his eyes glimmer, and he reaches up—tentatively—to bury his left hand in Roy’s hair, which feels…

Utterly transcendent, really.

“Shut up,” Ed says.

“All right,” Roy says.

There are a lot of better places for his mouth to be, after all; a lot of better things for it to undertake. Exploring every curve and line and swell and shadow of Ed’s torso is a much more productive endeavor.

The way Ed writhes beneath him—and rises to meet him, skin to skin, muscles smooth and hard at turns, fingers clenching in Roy’s hair—pulls the breath out of him faster and faster until he can hear the edge of a gasp on every inhalation. His heart pulses in his ears, trembles in his fingertips, throbs in his guts and his groin—

He can’t let it get the better of him—can’t let it rule him; can’t let it ruin him; can’t let it crush his judgment, crumple his coherent thoughts—

Ed’s hips hike up against his hand, pushing for friction, striving for heat, and for an undeniable instant his vision blurs with the sheer force of it—of anticipation realized; of arousal like a forest fire, scorching every cell of his body, setting them alight. He’s not himself anymore: not a person; not a being; not a consciousness. He’s a tongue of flame, and Ed is the only oxygen left in the room, and he’s sealing their mouths together as a matter of survival, not seduction—it’s so much more than just an overture; so much more than just a kiss; so _much_.

This is dangerous. Too deep, too desperate, too inevitable by half—and neither of them has ever been much beyond the universe’s plaything; they both know how the most beautiful things at the beginning always end.

Roy gathers all that’s left in him—everything he’s _got_ —and draws back enough to murmur against Ed’s lips— “If you’re not _sure_ —”

“Trust me,” Ed breathes back, and his eyelashes lift so slowly that Roy’s stomach clenches, and the way Ed’s eyes burn behind them makes his hands shake. “I’m sure.”

Roy fights in another half a breath. “I don’t want to—take—”

“Advantage?” Ed says. “Liberties? Fuckin’ _try_ it, Roy. You think you could get anything from me that I didn’t want you to have?”

“Not exactly,” Roy says, feeling the sweat prickle at his hairline, watching the answering gleam of Ed’s. “I think I could convince you to want things that you wouldn’t if you were left to your own devices.”

Ed’s fingers loosen from his hair, stroke at the back of his neck, and then curl around it to hold him still while Ed looks into his eyes.

“I’m not left to my own devices,” Ed says. “And if you try to leave, I’m gonna kick your ass, because I want _this_ , and you getting all stuck in your head like you do isn’t gonna change a fucking thing.”

The press of Roy’s heart against his ribcage feels enormous—feels urgent, and imperative, and so staggeringly important that it stops his breath again.

Ed’s fingers twist themselves into his hair again and tug, gently.

“C’mon,” Ed says. “Impress me.”

Roy kisses him again, harder and deeper, pinning him to the bed with it—which is better, at this moment and in the long run, than the verbal answer.

_Anything. Anything in my power—anything in the world—for you._

He fixes both hands on Ed’s hips to hold them still as he moves down with his mouth again, trying to taste every centimeter. The way Ed’s breath hitches quicker with every flick of Roy’s tongue against his skin holds Roy hovering with a magnetism he can’t fight, can’t even hope to resist—the heat flows between them, cycling, circling, searing. A closed system; one set of shared nerves firing bright—

When Roy shifts back far enough to take Ed’s cock into his mouth, Ed throws his head back, spine undulating up off of the mattress, and the automail fingers scrabble in the sheets while their softer brothers tighten in Roy’s hair.

Roy coaxes a whimper out of him with an upward sweep of the tongue—and then a whine, as he intensifies the suction, lets it hollow out his cheeks, releases all the tension in his jaw so that he can swallow Ed down all the way to the back of his throat and bathe him in the warmth of it from base to tip.

“Fuck,” Ed manages. His fingers move—either a frenetic twitch or a gesture with intent; Roy’s so dizzy with the endorphins that it’s difficult to differentiate, but he knows which side it’s safer to err on, and he raises his head.

“Just—” Both heels push against the sheets; Roy doesn’t try to resist the impulse to lay one fingertip at the top of Ed’s right thigh and drag it downward, slowly, as far as he can reach. “Mustang—I’ve done this before; I know what I’m in for; can you _just_ —”

Roy sits up, wrapping his hand around the base of Ed’s dick to keep it company while he runs his tongue along his lip and smiles.

“Good things come to those who wait, my dear,” he says.

Ed’s eyes narrow, and he bares his teeth, and with his hair loose and half-tangled around his face like this, he’s everything Roy ever caught himself fantasizing about when they fought like animals in the office.

“Get your fucking pants off,” Ed says.

Roy gazes down at him as rapturously as possible. “So romantic.”

“This isn’t romance,” Ed says, bucking his hips up into Roy’s hand and then hooking the automail leg around the small of his back, pressing the metal in a touch too fervently for it to be comfortable. His hand settled on Roy’s waist as Roy pulled back, though, and there’s something strangely tender about that—something very small, and very soft, and very intimate. “This is sex. Or I guess in your case, sitting on the bed _talking_ about sex and startin’ shit you’ve got apparently no intention of ever finishing, so—”

Roy laughs, softly, and leans in to kiss the inside of Ed’s right knee—and then the inside of the left one, which leaves a tang of iron on his mouth after the faint tinge of sweat from the other.

“I have,” he says, meeting Ed’s eyes, “every last possible intention of finishing. I intend for you to finish more than once.”

Very, very satisfyingly, that wipes the scowl right off of Ed’s face, leaving behind an expression that combines the best parts of amazement and hunger.

“Perhaps you’re right,” Roy says. “There’s quite a lot I’d like to do tonight. We should get started.”

That drives Ed’s hips upward against his hand again, harder this time, and Ed has to gasp for air twice before he gets out, “Oh. Oh, _shit_.”

Rarely has Roy heard a more appealing invitation, regardless of the particulars.

There’s something simultaneously liberating and terrifying in peeling off the last of his clothes, hiking Ed higher up on the bed, carding both hands through the expanse of beautiful hair until Ed growls in the back of his throat and arches his body up into Roy’s rather meaningfully.

Ed has seen the best and the worst of him, and somehow that makes it feel as though Roy has nothing at all and everything he cares for to lose. He can’t disappoint now—can’t fail when he has, in his hands, a golden opportunity to make up for some sliver of the misery he’s put Ed through. This could be the best chance of his life to atone for some fraction of it. At the very least, he owes it to the squirming dynamo beneath him to give Ed the fuck of his life.

Roy begins with another long, thorough survey of the contours of Ed’s entire body—guiding him to roll over slowly, revealing one inch after another, testing every centimeter with his fingertips and then his mouth, breathing hot and then massaging progressively more vigorously until Ed stifles his own protests about procrastination with another groan. By the time he makes his merry way back to the magnificent ass, Ed’s flesh knee is wobbling, and the sheen of sweat on his forehead looks like a silver veil in the fading light.

Ed does, indeed, know what he’s in for, but Roy’s not sure he himself could possibly have prepared for this. Perhaps he should have considered the exquisitely precise control of individual muscles required for Ed to have balanced the automail all these years, and to have fought the way he does and won so often. It’s hardly Roy’s fault: he’s harbored a general appreciation of Ed’s remarkable variety of skills over the years, but he’s managed not to squander too much time wondering how they could be applied in bed. He has to confess to a few scattered moments here and there allowing the distracting prospect of Ed’s flexibility to drag his mind into dark corners and humid gutters, but he never let it tow him quite this far.

It throws him at first, but then it fits into place as seamlessly and easily as their bodies keep doing every time he lets himself come close—of course Ed would be able to relax on command. Of course Ed could execute a task demanding both fine motor control and intense cognitive dissonance: that’s his _specialty_.

It also means that Roy’s fingers shift into Ed deeper and faster than he ever imagined possible, in no small part because Roy was watching Ed tilt his head back, cataloguing the way the cords stand out in his neck, savoring the ripple of his throat as he swallowed, and expected resistance in every way.

Instead Ed is opening for him yet again, making the pain of it look effortless. Isn’t that always the way, for both of them? Ed masking suffering to offer up generosity; Roy carving swathes of collateral damage everywhere he moves.

Roy chokes down the tremble of a moan climbing up his throat at the sight of Ed laid out like this, gold and silver and sun-kissed skin splayed out on the tangled white sheets.

“Are you—” He has to pause and dig for some remnant of a breath. “Are you—all right? Is that—”

“I’m so much fucking better than all right,” Ed says, opening his eyes just enough to fix Roy with a glare. “Just _fuck_ me already.”

“Not just yet,” Roy says.

The harsh impression of Ed sinking his teeth into his bottom lip is the only warning Roy gets before Ed’s twisting and writhing like a newly-freed demon, angling to drive Roy’s fingers deeper in him, and that—

Is a game that two can play, and both can win, but not like this.

He pulls his hand away, drawing his fingers out altogether, before Ed can shift to follow, and then he holds them out of reach.

The sound Ed makes—part groan and part growl, with a hint of a wail and a touch of a snarl—comes from an entirely new and unprecedented category of sin.

Roy really hopes that he survives this.

“Come _on_ ,” Ed says. “Just—I can take it. I _can_.”

“How many times have I told you,” Roy says, tracing one fingertip feather-light and painstakingly slowly along the intersecting arches of Ed’s lowest ribs, “that just because you can doesn’t mean you should?”

“In your office?” Ed says. “About a million times.” He props himself up on his elbows and smirks, eyelashes low. “In your bed, though, I think this is the first.”

“Edward,” Roy says, and he knows that Ed can hear that he’s serious, because the pout gives way to a frown, and Ed’s gaze settles on him and stays. “I need to know that I can trust you to be… careful… right now. Just to start. I don’t want to hurt you.” He waits for Ed’s eyes to narrow before he leans in, breathes into the shell of Ed’s ear— “Not on accident, at least.”

“Fucker,” Ed manages on a shivering exhale. “I—yeah. Okay. Fine. I’m listening.”

“Good,” Roy says, infusing it with the smoothest curl of warmth he can muster. “Stay still for this. Will you do that for me?”

Ed grinds his teeth, reprises the glare in order to turn it on the ceiling, and then nods.

“Beautiful,” Roy says. “I’ll make it worth your while.”

“I bet,” Ed mutters, but his eyes flick to Roy’s face, and there is very little there that even a lengthy stretch of the imagination would qualify as resentment.

Roy wants to make good on all of the breathless promises. It’s been a long, long time since rolling across the mattress with another human being left him rent through and ravenous like this.

“Good,” Roy says. “Stay still for me. As much as you can. Just for this part.”

“Pushy bastard,” Ed says, setting his jaw, but translated back and forth from Ed’s somewhat peculiar grasp of verbal communication, that sounds an awful lot like agreement.

It’ll have to be close enough, because Roy really can’t contain himself anymore.

The good news is that he can keep his body more or less level with Ed’s even as he reaches down again, trails a fingertip teasingly slow down Ed’s perineum—and Ed shudders, clenches his teeth, and glares viciously, but he doesn’t flinch either forward or away. This position gives Roy an entirely new appreciation of… just about everything, really. He can straddle Ed’s right leg to work some heavy friction against his own tragically neglected erection without sacrificing his ongoing assessment of Ed’s expressions; the full extent of Ed’s incomparable form is set out beneath him, trying not to strain into his touch.

If sex was always this exquisite, Roy would never do anything else.

But it’s Ed.

It’s Ed, transmuting it into something infinitely finer than anyone could have imagined given the component parts.

A great deal of adulatory finger-fucking and a generous quantity of lube later, Roy rewards Ed’s uncharacteristic patience and self-control with a very targeted push of fingertips at his prostate.

Ed’s whole body convulses—his toes curl; his spine arcs again, high enough to lift his hips six inches off of the bed; his left hand dives back into Roy’s hair while the right seizes a fistful of the sheets. The “Ah _fuck_ ” that escapes him sounds like the plea of a drowning man breaking the surface, grateful and gasping for air.

“I think you’re ready,” Roy says.

Ed blinks at the ceiling, chest heaving, and pulls absently at Roy’s hair. “I think I’m gonna kick your ass to Creta if I can ever walk again.”

“Interesting,” Roy says. “I suppose it’s in my best interests to ensure that you can’t.”

Ed stares at him for a second, as if there’s something curious and inexplicable about Roy just now—as if none of this is real; as if the dream will split and dissipate, the way they always do.

Then Ed laughs.

“Make my _fuckin’_ day, Mustang,” he says.

Roy leans in to nip at his collarbone and then soothe it with a softer kiss. “I would be delighted.”

They fit together as if they were cut for it—as if some semi-benevolent maker built them specifically for this. As if all of the jagged edges that the world has hacked into the both of them with strife and serendipity were always, always complementary, and once they’re sealed together, the outlines of the emptinesses align—not cracks, but seams, and joins. Convergences within the margins of a whole, with all the scars like secrets written in a language that Roy can only read when he can taste Ed’s mouth, his tongue, his teeth, his sweat—

Ed moves like a heartbeat incarnate, hot and fast and deliberate, surging and slowing at turns, but the rhythm remains undeniable and inescapable, and Roy doesn’t want to be anything other than a slave to it, dancing feverishly to the cadence, letting it ripple in him and pound right through his bones.

The warmth that blooms between them, searing through the tiny momentary spaces as they shift and slide and part and meet, scalds the air until it’s wrung out every breathable molecule, and all that’s left of Roy’s resolve is a coil of smoke. Ed’s hairline darkens, deepening to bronze to frame his face as the sweat soaks in, but his eyes never lose their luster or leave Roy’s face—except, of course, when sensation overwhelms him, and he bites down hard on his bottom lip and squeezes his eyes shut, and his body folds in tighter around Roy, and _God_ —

It’s possible that everything leading up to now was meant for this. It’s possible that Roy has lived this long entirely for tonight. He doesn’t deserve a single instant of it, but like _hell_ is he too proud to take it.

The privilege of gripping Ed’s ass for leverage, for instance, is a reward he never would have dared to ask for, but now—

Ed swallows, stretches, writhes—he wrapped the automail arm around Roy’s shoulders to stabilize them several minutes ago; the conflagration crackling in both of them burnt away the shame. Love is like alchemy, and alchemy is like love, and Roy wants nothing more than for Ed to see himself for what he _is_ —for all of the staggering magnificence and all of the ordinary kindness; for the humanity and the greatness and the petulance and the perfection. Chipped, scarred, cracked, and battered; never-broken; utterly alive. Ed thinks of himself as the remnants and the repercussions of a guilty conscience and a long history of battles pitched on sinking ground, unfairly lost. He is so much more than that. He is so much more than he’s willing to believe.

Roy’s going to prove it to him—someday, somehow. Roy’s going to make it so painfully obvious that not even some characteristic feats of staunch denial will blot it out.

Worship is a long-term process, but there are much worse places to begin than here, with Ed in his bed and arguably at his mercy.

The first time that Ed comes, it’s with his knees over Roy’s shoulders, and his cock in Roy’s mouth. He attempts, rather valiantly, to give an unnecessary warning before it overtakes him—he gasps in a deep breath and holds it while his spine curves up off the sheets again; his head falls back, and hair scatters across the pillowcase; his jaw clenches, and tendons strain in his neck and his throat, and his left hand finds Roy’s right and grips it tight enough to threaten circulation—

And the air shudders out of him like a demon released, in little hitching half-exhales, as the thickest vein under his cock pulses, and Roy can taste him, almost-sweet and slick and tremulous. When his cock softens, and he’s spent, and Roy’s swallowed the mouthful and started licking at the remnants, he drops to the bed again with a faint noise, and then he looks at Roy with half-lidded eyes like he can’t quite believe that either of them are here.

Roy’s been thinking the same thing, really.

The second time that Ed comes, it’s with Roy’s cock in him, and one of Roy’s hands in his hair and the other underneath his ass—both of which are so sublime that Roy’s not sure which he loves better.

He doesn’t have to choose. And he doesn’t have to look away for a single second as the heat coalesces in them simultaneously, and Ed writhes, and chokes, and grabs for Roy’s hips with both hands, seizes on securely, gnaws his lip, and then laughs uproariously through the crash of the wave that carries him back into oblivion.

His whole body tightens as he does—and that and the broad, bright, open, utterly unthinking curve of his grin are what drag Roy right over the precipice with him. The world spins every-colored, opalescent and breath-snatchingly intense, and for a long moment Roy feels equal parts meaningless and endless, eternal and unaccountable and absolutely _free_ —

Spiraling down to land in this obscenely comfortable bed next to the most beautiful dream of a young man that he’s dared to touch in years makes for a rather stunning consolation prize as the little thrills and tremors soothe away.

He feels—

Buoyant. Light. And perhaps that’s more distant than it used to be—perhaps this floating, cloud-pale contentment is weaker than the rush of fierce, possessive affection that oxytocin used to kindle in him—but damn it, he’s feeling _something_. He’ll take that. He’ll take whatever he can get.

The ceiling offers precious few suggestions, so pushes his hair back out of his face—smearing a layer of sweat as he goes, but he can’t say that he begrudges it—and rolls over onto his elbow to attend to Ed.

Who is—

Watching him too closely, shoulders tensed, eyes very dark and very guarded.

Shit.

_Shit_.

Oh, God.

It makes sense, doesn’t it, in a universal justice sort of way? Roy knew that he had to hold tight to this one—knew that he had to keep it corralled between both hands the whole way through if he wanted it to be enough for both of them.

He let go, at the end. When they were at the edge together, he released his control of it, because he _wanted_ it to bring him to his knees. He wanted the payoff.

And this is the price.

He has to swallow once before he can clear his throat. He tries to keep his voice level, and he tries to smile. Not too loud; not too expectant—he can’t risk it sounding like an accusation; if he pushes too hard for an answer, Ed will balk on principle.

“What’s wrong?” Roy asks.

“Shit,” Ed says, and the way it sticks in his throat on the way out makes Roy’s heart crumple, which slows his reflexes as Ed sits up and slides towards the edge of the bed— “There it is.”

“What?” Roy asks, reaching after him on instinct. What’s he supposed to grasp for? Without clothes to hang onto, there’s nothing that doesn’t seem overly possessive—nothing that wouldn’t feel like staking a claim, and that is the last thing that he wants to do when they’re walking on a combination of coals and eggshells.

“The fucking regret,” Ed says. He stands up, finds his boxers, and shimmies into them; it is a miracle that some of Roy’s higher functions survive.

He’s running out of time, and he’s running out of choices.

“Edward,” he says, sliding the steel in underneath it. “Stop. Look at me.”

Ed’s shoulders tighten further, and Roy can hear him swallowing hard, but he sets his jaw and half-turns just enough to meet Roy’s eyes.

“I regret,” Roy says, “that I didn’t take you out to dinner first. I regret that I wasn’t wearing my glasses.”

Ed eyes him.

“I regret that I was apparently so devastatingly mediocre that you’ve been forced to flee for the sake of your dignity,” Roy says, which is a gamble, but the alarm bells clanging in his head have compelled him to say something more, and they make it very hard to think.

Ed’s mouth twitches, and he turns the rest of the way to face the bed—but without shifting a centimeter closer to it.

“Nah,” he says. “You… I mean, it’s kind of fucked up, honestly. You lived up to all the shit that gets said.”

There isn’t a trace of excitement or amusement or appreciation in that statement—he speaks it so matter-of-factly that it sounds like it belongs to a completely different conversation.

Roy’s heart pounds in his ears.

“Ed,” he says, slowly, “you were… As with everything else I have ever seen you attempt, you were magnificent. You… _do_ know that. Don’t you?”

Ed works his jaw, eyes narrowing. “Don’t bullshit me.”

“I’m not,” Roy says. “Give me half an hour and a cup of coffee, and we can start over so that I can prove it.”

“Then you’d never get to sleep,” Ed says.

“To hell with sleep,” Roy says, possibly a touch more ferociously than it merits, but sleep hasn’t been particularly kind to him lately in any case. “You’re better than sleep. You’re better than _food_. I mean that.”

Ed’s eyes flicker up and down his face, and then, cautiously, he says, “You’re… serious.”

“Of course I am,” Roy says.

Ed draws a breath and slowly folds his arms across his chest. “You… really… enjoyed—it. That.”

“ _God_ , yes,” Roy says. “What the hell did you think I was going to say?” he manages, and this feels like—falling? Swimming? 

Drowning, then. A bit of both.

“I don’t know,” Ed says, looking at the carpet. “‘Get dressed and get out’ is pretty popular.”

Red. Dark red—the shade just before blood clots, when it’s new and thick and spilling. It floods Roy’s vision and chokes him before he can even try to fight it down; all emotions have colors, and this one has a suffocating heat. “Popular with _who_?”

Roy’s eyes focus just enough to see Ed’s body tilting, as if a part of him wants to take a step back, but the rest refuses to back down.

“Whoa,” Ed says. “Not even ‘whom’? You know that setting fire to people’s exes is still illegal, right?”

He hasn’t moved any closer—and he won’t, will he, if Roy proves himself still to be a loaded loose cannon?

In Ed’s heart of hearts—when he’s not reeling too hard from the old hurt, when he’s held together well enough to stop punishing himself for crimes almost forgotten—he knows that he deserves better than that. Deep down, Ed knows that he’s worth more.

And he knows how low Roy can sink when the world drags too heavily around him.

Roy draws a long breath and lets it out carefully so that it won’t shake.

“All the more reason,” Roy says, “that I need to run the government. Anyone who would speak those words to you should be flogged.”

Ed’s body language shifts—it’s subtle, but it softens, and Roy can’t stop the relief from pouring through his chest. “Publicly?”

“Very likely,” Roy says. “Alternately, we could always bring back the stocks.”

“Waste of perfectly good tomatoes,” Ed says.

“Come here,” Roy says, drawing the covers back.

Ed hesitates.

“Ed,” Roy says, voice as low and soft as he wagers will still be audible. “Please.”

He can see the concession in Ed’s eyes before he hears it in the sigh, but since the result is Ed crossing back to the bed and climbing up regardless, it hardly matters.

Once he’s settled, Roy shifts over and raises an arm. “May I?”

The suspicion returns, as if Roy could possibly have some sort of ulterior motive. “May you what? Cuddle or something?”

“Yes,” Roy says. “Or something.”

Ed makes a point of scowling at the ceiling. “I mean—I guess. If you want to.”

“I do,” Roy says. “Quite a lot. It’s embarrassing. You mustn’t tell anyone.”

The scowl encounters some resistance from an impending smile. “Jeez, Mustang. How many secrets am I supposed to keep for you?”

Roy slides an arm around him. “How many do I deserve?”

“Depends,” Ed says, but he raises both arms to wrap them across Roy’s—as if bribes or threats or any power in the world could make Roy retract it now. “You gonna go to sleep now?”

“Perhaps,” Roy says. “Maybe there’s something to be said for a bit of exercise right before bed.”

Ed pats his arm. “You could always just jog a lap around the block, old man. Real slow. Take it easy on your knees.”

Roy shifts closer to breathe into his ear. “There are much, much more enjoyable things to do on my knees.”

Ed manages to keep his expression clear of a reaction, but he can’t disguise the shiver that goes through him, and with the pair of them tangled up this tight, Roy can’t possibly mistake it. “Don’t think that’s the one that doctors would recommend.”

“You’re not talking to the right doctors,” Roy says.

Ed wrinkles his nose, pressing his lips together—Roy recognizes that face by now. He’s trying not to laugh. “Didn’t realize that your political career had advanced to the point where you’re bribing doctors to sanction your sex life.”

“Desperate times, my dear,” Roy says.

Ed lies still for a few moments, gazing at the ceiling, and then he strokes his fingertips along Roy’s forearm—just once. Experimentally, perhaps.

“How long’s it been?” Ed asks.

“How long has it been since what?” Roy asks. “Am I rusty? Cuddling is an under-appreciated art form. I—”

“Since the last time you got laid,” Ed says, still without looking at him.

Roy’s skin prickles—barely detectably; a smidgeon of a survival instinct surfacing. There are land-mines and trip-wires somewhere past that question, aren’t there?

“Ah,” he says. “It… a while.” Ed thrives on honesty. Surely that’s the best course. “The last… well. The last situation I would call a ‘relationship’ was all the way back in East City. Since then, there’s been too much at stake—and too much else going on, really—for anything that involved. There have been several… less-meaningful… interactions since then, but not especially recently.” _Not in almost two years, after the last one casually mentioned having friends in the press who would be delighted to hear about my shortcomings if the night didn’t go precisely how she wanted._ “It usually takes time to determine whether you can trust someone, even with something that’s intended to be brief, and I haven’t been able to make that kind of an investment in… a fairly long time.”

Ed smiles slightly. “That’s sort of what I figured.”

Roy—

Doesn’t like this. Roy doesn’t like this at all. Edward Elric is not supposed to be difficult to read; he’s not supposed to make comments that are equal parts opaque and ominous; he’s not supposed to have Roy tiptoeing in a conversation like this.

Roy maneuvers his other hand out from beneath the pillow to stroke a bit of Ed’s hair back from his forehead. “What about you?”

“I dunno,” Ed says quietly. “Yeah. Not a lot of… much of anything lately. Got tired of people throwing it back in my face.”

“Ed,” Roy says.

He waits until Ed’s eyes slide over to him, and Ed’s eyebrows rise.

“Fuck them,” Roy says. “Fuck _anyone_ who doesn’t appreciate you.”

Ed blinks three times, and then he starts to smile—thinly, and a little bit unstably, but it counts.

“Shit,” he says. “I don’t think I’ve ever heard you say that.”

“I have a reputation,” Roy says. He guides a very silky lock of hair back behind Ed’s ear. “But some occasions require a bit more emphasis, and I believe that this is one of them.”

Ed watches him intently as he fusses a bit more and then withdraws his hand, folding his arm between them. Ed’s not as warm as he would have expected. Does the automail siphon away enough energy to reduce his internal temperature? It would probably be rude to ask. Even if it wasn’t a strangely intimate question in its way, Roy gets the sense that Ed prefers to be reminded of the existence of—and the reason for—the metal parts of his person as infrequently as possible.

Which is a shame, but that’s a long road he doesn’t have time to set foot on tonight.

Someday, he dares to hope. Maybe someday soon.

“I guess I’m glad we did this,” Ed says.

“Did what?” Roy asks. He runs his open palm up across Ed’s chest and then back down. “Did _this_ , do you mean?”

Ed wriggles, which apparently distracts him enough that he can’t contain the grin. “You— _yeah_. Obviously. Knock it off.”

Roy kisses his shoulder. It’s the more sensitive one—with Ed on his back on the half of the bed that he normally claims, the automail is closer to the outside edge of the mattress, and to the door—but Roy doesn’t imagine that he would have been able to stop himself regardless of whether Ed could feel the gesture or not.

“I am, too,” he says.

“Okay,” Ed says. “Good thing that’s settled. Are you gonna sleep now?”

Roy sighs and makes a show of rolling back and collapsing against his pillow. “Your commitment to my sleeping schedule makes me wonder whatever happened to the reckless young man who used to pull so many all-nighters at the library that they would call me up concerned.”

Ed makes a face. “They called you?”

“Often,” Roy says. “They were worried about you, because they liked you. As most people do.”

That earns him a croak of a laugh, which is… unsettling. “Maybe most librarians. Not most _people_.”

“Are librarians not people?” Roy asks. “No one ever told me. What am I supposed to do with that sort of arcane knowledge? All the pillars of my world are crumbling. How am I meant to sleep _now_ , burdened by such a terrible tru—”

“Would it help if I smothered you with a pillow?” Ed asks.

“Doubtful,” Roy says.

Ed snorts. “You sure it’s not worth a shot?”

“Positive,” Roy says.

Then he raises himself on one elbow again, leaving his other hand free to trail his fingers down along Ed’s jaw. He draws one fingertip under Ed’s chin to tilt it upwards ever so slightly.

“Goodnight, Ed,” he says.

Ed swallows, but then there’s a flicker of a smile.

“G’night, asshole,” he says. “Are you gonna kiss me, or just think about it?”

“Guess,” Roy says, letting his eyelids slip low as he leans in.

They’re not, after all, the first part of him to have fallen.

  


* * *

  


He wakes to a faint shake to the mattress, accompanied by a creak and a rustle—springs and sheets, presumably.

He remembers—

Not especially many specifics, but he supposes that he doesn’t need them. The warm ache in him is explanation enough; deep down, he knows everything important before the rest of his brain has shuddered fully free of dreams.

Whether or not his memory has woken more or less intact, the rest of his brain fumbles with regular functions.

“Ed?” he manages, lifting himself enough to look—and it couldn’t be anyone else, of course, but the fact that Ed’s halfway into his clothes by now, attempting to stagger towards the door while he buttons his pants—

Oh, hell.

Oh, _please_ —no. Not this. Not now.

“I’ve gotta go,” Ed says.

Roy’s brain flails helplessly. Fantastic. “What?”

Ed makes it to the bedroom door, opens it, steps out into the hall—

The panic rushes in as though it’s drawn to the space in the bed—as though the emptied expanse of white is a vacuum, with its own gravity and a riptide’s vengeance.

Roy’s up, at the edge of the mattress, feet on the ground—heart in his throat, in his ears, in his wrists, in his fingertips; his knees try to give way, but he makes it to the armoire and snatches down his bathrobe and shoulders his way into it as he forces his feet to carry him across the room and out of it.

Ed is two steps away from the bottom of the staircase by the time Roy’s momentum hurls him against the railing at the top landing—he knows that he should slow down; he knows that breaking his neck won’t solve any of this; but the skitter of his heartbeat spurs his whole body, and he can’t fight it. Not with his head still swanning back from swarms of dreams; not with the desperation hot and sharp and salty, sour like blood in the back of his mouth—

“Ed,” he says, and the first few steps still between them disappear before recognizes that his feet have moved again. “What—where are you going?”

“I don’t know,” Ed says. He sweeps across the foyer, fighting his coat down off the hook. “Out. Away. Doesn’t matter.”

“It does matter,” Roy says. “Why are you—”

Ed spins on his heel, coat seized in both hands so tightly that Roy fears for the fabric on the side gripped by the automail.

Roy’s close, now, though—close to the foot of the stairs; close to being able to see the nuances of the scowl; close enough to reach out if that might do anything but push Ed across the threshold faster.

“Look,” Ed bites out. “I fucked it up. Okay? You can dress it up and play it down and talk pretty about it all you want, but I _fucked it up_ , Mustang. We had a thing going, and it was fine, and then I picked it up and dropped it on its head like I always fucking do.”

“I would hardly,” Roy says, holding tightly to the curl of the banister at the bottom of the staircase until he can gauge whether Ed’s going to bolt, “call last night ‘fucking it up’.”

“I get it,” Ed says. “You’re—you know. You’re struggling right now; you’re really vulnerable, and you needed someone, and I was right there. That’s fine. Believe me. I get it. You don’t have to—” He grits his teeth and pushes right on through it, just like he always does. “You don’t have to pretend it was anything other than what it was.”

In a distant way, Roy is stunned that his knees don’t give out.

That _can’t_ be it.

Ed is so much more perceptive than he used to be—so good at reading Roy these days; so terribly, tragically, mercilessly skilled at seeing through him.

How the hell can he not _know_?

“I didn’t need ‘someone’,” Roy says. The utterly inadequate words feel cottony—leaden. Thick in his mouth; flat on his tongue. “It was not about a convenient body, and it was not some sort of last resort.”

“Whatever,” Ed says, hauling his coat onto his left arm so violently that Roy thinks again that surely he’ll rip it. “I just told you—”

“And I’m telling you,” Roy says, louder, “that you’re wrong. I wanted _you_ , Ed. Is that so impossible to believe?”

“I keep telling you,” Ed says, setting his jaw harder by the second. “No one fucking wants me—sometimes they think they do. Sometimes they think it so hard they convince me that they fucking mean it, but they don’t.” The automail gets stuck near the end of the sleeve; he fights it through. “They don’t get it. They don’t know. It’s never me they’re looking for; it’s some—theoretical future version, or some analogue, or some person who’s like me but changed. It’s never—” He reaches up, shoves his left hand into his hair, holding the heel of it over his eye for a second, hiding the bruise. “I just—can’t. Okay? I can’t be what you want, or what you think I am, or what you’re going to need a month from now. I’ve been throwing it against the wall from every fucking angle that I can for two hours, and there’s just _no way_ , Mustang. There’s no way both of us make it out of this unless we quit right fucking now, and we let it die.” He drags in a deep breath, drops his hand, and looks at the ceiling. “Me pushing you to—all of that—was coercive and fucking selfish, and I fucking _knew_ it wasn’t going to work, and you don’t have to stand there and pretend like it’s something that it’s not.”

“Edward,” Roy says. He takes one step forward, and Ed goes still but doesn’t yet retreat. “I’m going to tell you something. I need you to listen to me, because it’s the truth.”

“Yeah, right,” Ed says, and his shoulders tilt towards the door, but his feet don’t shift.

Roy gives himself two precious seconds to collect himself—to gather all the little scraps of courage he has left.

“This didn’t start last night,” he says. “This didn’t start on Thursday, in the Immigrations building, with that kiss.” He breathes. “Not for me. For me, it started a long time ago. And I’ve spent all of that time thinking through it. I’ve spent all of that time paying attention.”

He takes one step closer. The hardwood is frigid underneath his feet.

“I know you,” he says. “I know who you are, Ed. I know who we both are; I know what we’re both capable of. If anyone should be running from this, it’s you. You should head out that door and get on a train and stay on it until you hit a national boundary line, if that’s what it takes to get away from me. You should run for the hills and stockpile weapons until you’ve got an armory. You should turn around and walk away and never once look over your shoulder.” He makes himself smile, which hurts a bit. At least that’s refreshing “But you shouldn’t do it for me. You should do it precisely _because_ it’s you that I want, and precisely because I know what it means to want you.”

Ed works his jaw, and his fingers clench and unclench, but when Roy takes another step forward, he still doesn’t move away.

“Fuck you,” Ed says, faintly.

“You did,” Roy says. “It was marvelous.”

“Shut up,” Ed says. He draws a deep breath, and his eyes dart to the door, then down to his curled hands, and then up to Roy’s eyes—where they fix and start to smolder. “Fine. You really want this shit, then—you’ve got to trust me, right?”

“I do,” Roy says. “To a degree that terrifies me.”

“Prove it,” Ed says. His eyes narrow—hard and bright and ruthless. That’s Roy’s only warning. “Tell me what happened on that trip to Ishval.”

The air leaves the room. Some portion of Roy’s spirit and all of the cartilage that used to inhabit his knees goes with it.

“That’s the deal,” Ed says, unyielding. Those eyes aren’t amber, at times like this—it’s too soft a stone altogether. They’re yellow diamond, with edges cut like knives. “Take it or leave it.”

Carefully, Roy pulls in a breath, holds it, and eases it back out.

“May I have some coffee first?” he asks.

The flash of amusement in the frontmost facet gives him his answer. “Fine.”

“How about a shower?” Roy asks.

“Don’t push your luck,” Ed says.


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WELL, WELL, WELL, we're finally at the part Roy's been dodging for 115,000 words. XD I'm sorry it's so late! I ran into the same problem again where it needed more edits than I'd realized, and since it's, y'know, more or less the most important scene in the fic, I didn't want to half-ass it. :c (I was also, to be honest, dragging my feet a little because I was starting to worry that it was going to be disappointing after everything that's preceded it, so I really hope that's not the case! ♥)
> 
> IMPORTANTLY – I went back and forth on how to warn for this, but I figure straightforward is probably being best: **there is a suicide in this chapter**. If that's something that might be triggering for you, and you need more details to know if you're okay to read it, please let me know, and I'd be happy to DM you on another platform and tell you more. ♥
> 
> I cut between chapters in a weird place last time, btw – the last line of the last one was Ed saying "Don't push your luck," which will make the first line of this one make more sense. OTL

As it turns out, Ed lets him nudge the luck in question for a good while—Roy is halfway through his second cup of coffee by the time Ed polishes off his own refill and smacks the empty mug down on the tabletop.

“So,” Ed says.

Roy takes a deep breath and narrowly manages not to release it as a sigh. “So.”

Ed settles, folding one arm on the back of the chair, and offers Roy what probably qualifies as a merciful smile. “Just… start wherever you want to. Take your time.”

Roy sips from his mug, but he knows that he can’t stall much longer without straining the limits of Ed’s patience.

It is unspeakably surreal to be here, after all this time—to be sitting at his own kitchen table with Edward Elric, slightly too early on a Saturday, with the pale light of morning creeping slowly up through the windowpane to crawl across the floor. To be here, fishing for the words to describe the nightmare that has dogged him daily and nightly and everywhere between for months on end. To be here, trying not just to _approach_ the sucking, seething, rotted wound within him—but to be reaching out with the intent of _containing_ it.

He supposes that if it doesn’t feel real, it may prove marginally easier for that.

“We arrived mid-afternoon,” he says. “Grumman also sent Major General Iver, who stood to benefit from a bit of cultural education; and a Lieutenant-Colonel named Thomas Breckney, who’s related to General Breckney and fancies himself some sort of diplomatic wunderkind. Both of them are intelligent enough to know that they were window-dressing for my presence, however, which bothered Iver quite a bit, because he’s extremely conceited and could not possibly understand why I would be more important there when he outranks me.” Roy sips his coffee. “There was also a contingent of half a dozen lesser officers, of course, for ‘security’ purposes.”

Ed grimaces. “Seems like overkill.”

“It was,” Roy says. “But not quite as much as the full dozen that I talked them down from, by invoking the incomprehensible logic that this would, in fact, look like an _invasion_ in a region still reeling from our last ‘peacekeeping’ endeavor.”

“Six is still a lot,” Ed says.

“It is,” Roy says.

That was, as it happened, precisely what Scar had said as well—which, as Roy supposes that he doesn’t have to emphasize (not least since he intends to avoid any and all charges of procrastination as he proceeds through this rather sordid narrative), puts both him and Ed in firm agreement with an individual who has wholeheartedly attempted to murder them both.

Roy is also well-aware that the individual in question is not actually named “Scar”, but since he apparently hasn’t selected a new moniker in the intervening years—possibly with the simple and admittedly admirable goal of spiting the census—the placeholder is just going to have to do.

When they’d arrived, Iver in particular took issue with their expedition being headed by a pardoned serial killer. Roy had pointed out, very cheerfully, that given the track record of the pardoned serial killer in question, a non-alchemist wasn’t in any particular danger regardless. Iver took issue with that, too, and attempted to get some of their guard to take issue with it as well. A few of them had almost come around to his perspective by the time that Scar paused at an intersection, turned around, fixed the crimson gaze on them intently, and flexed one of his hands to curl it slowly into a fist.

Iver took less issue with that—which was, in a very amusing and very sad sort of way, a poignant commentary on the principles ingrained in the psyche of the Amestrian military, especially the unquestioning respect for the threat of brute force.

The bottom line, though, was that they all made it to their hotel without much further argument, and without much further conversation of any type at all.

“You don’t have to be funny,” Ed says.

Roy hasn’t yet bested the creeping feeling of unease at how utterly distinct the details of these memories are as he reaches for them—he knows, of course, and has known for years, that the brain crystallizes trauma sometimes; and at other times blots it out entirely. Roy knows that he’s been living and reliving every last instant of this cluster of recollections ever since they ended, but there’s still something destabilizing about how new they feel now. It shouldn’t be this clear. It shouldn’t come this easily.

The prospect preoccupies him too much to analyze Ed’s question.

“What do you mean?” he asks instead.

Ed gestures, vaguely, with the left hand, and then eyes Roy’s unattended coffee cup. “Exactly what I said. You don’t have to be funny. I know this shit is—hard. I know it is. And I know that sometimes faking like it’s no big deal and you can laugh about it makes it seem like less, but… you don’t… have to. Is all.” He leans back in his chair and folds his arms into a barrier across his chest. “And just in general,” he says. “You have this whole amused-and-amusing thing that you put on for people outside, but… you don’t have to be funny to be valuable. You’re still important, and you’re still worth listening to, and you’re still a human being.”

Roy stares at him.

Ed shrugs.

“Just figured I should say it before you got too much momentum,” he says. “Keep going.”

Roy swallows. There’s something to what Ed just said, of course—Roy’s automatic impulse is to smile, suavely, before he gamely carries on.

Roy had held Scar back in the hotel lobby to trade news while the others trooped upstairs, trailing the girl who’d greeted them at the front desk, to unpack. Evidently, Miles had had to make an emergency trip to Briggs for a consultation on an item of national security so paramount that he hadn’t been permitted to reveal its nature even to Scar—which sounded like a pile of bureaucratic bullshit designed to pull Miles out of range of the influence of Generals Mustang and Iver, but Roy couldn’t prove that, and he also couldn’t blame Olivier if it was true. He wouldn’t have trusted himself with her officers, either.

In any case, it changed very little about their objectives: Scar was, as a semi-official city ambassador, more than qualified to escort them around and terrify the lower-ranked lackeys halfway out of their wits. Roy considered that it would probably level the playing field, in some respect: Ishval was scared shitless of him, rightfully; it was only fair that the Amestrians imposing on the populace should experience some measure of a similar fear.

Roy also supposed that it probably should have felt stranger to be having a calm strategic conversation with a man whose home and family he had contributed mightily to the obliteration of; and who had attempted to explode his head on one memorable occasion and desired it on more occasions than anyone could count. There was, however, something about staging coups and surviving apocalypses with another person that just made all of that petty counter-murdering seem rather trivial. If nothing else, he and Scar both already knew that the greater good, debatable as its specifics tended to be, mattered more to each of them than the old vendettas did. That was a place to start from.

A substantially less-suitable place to continue was the meal set out for them in the main dining room shortly after sundown—a painstakingly Amestrian affair down to the serviettes and the salad forks, which flew in the face of every last tenet of traditional Ishvalan hospitality. Roy had done the research. There was no attempt at merging cultures, or at splitting differences; this was strictly, stringently put on for their benefit, at odds with everything that really belonged in a place like this.

This city was full of tragedies. Every street still reeked of smoke and blood, to Roy; every corner swarmed with ghosts. But this moment required a different sort of sadness. All of their muddled something-along-the-lines-of-good intentions would ring meaningless if, even at the hearth of their host, they insisted on seeing the familiar. Roy hadn’t come here to settle into a pretense—this was a bid for _peace_. Agreement had to be born in understanding. This was never going to work if they walled themselves in.

To make matters worse, they were waited on by the hotel staff, and Scar didn’t join them at the table—presumably he had better things to do than schmooze with a group of men that he would have preferred to have strangled outright, but it tipped the balance further in the direction of collapse.

Roy was going to have to do something about this. It would have been a thousand times easier if Miles had been here—his position uniquely bridged the gap between these two worlds, and everyone seated here would have respected both his rank and his poise, grudgingly or not. Olivier’s men commanded that much at the very least.

Initially, Roy’s attempts at unerring politeness to the staff without compromising the gregarious playboy persona were met with mixed results.

After one of them heard Iver call him “Mustang,” Roy’s attempts were met with universally negative results.

The young man refilling their drinks, whom Roy recognized as the bellhop who had taken their luggage as well, went to the trouble of faking a moderately convincing but clearly intentional slip and spilled cold water all over Roy’s lap. Roy didn’t blame him in the slightest—and, unfortunately for the kid’s likely hope of garnering a bad reaction, it was significantly easier to handle such a non-accident gracefully when it was both an excellent wake-up call after the long trip and a refreshing antidote to the climate. Roy didn’t imagine that he’d feel quite so sanguine about it after night fell fully, and the desert cold swept in, but for the moment—

Well. Roy had learned a long time ago, and was still re-learning almost daily, that the moment was all that mattered.

Their too-gracious hosts served Amestrian brandy to follow the last of the wine when the plates had been cleared away. Roy had to wonder, in the throes of something akin to an approximation of fairness, how much of this experience had been dictated by the Amestrian organizers. Was is possible that the inn had had a part in planning this, and had assumed that it was what they would prefer? In keeping with the main point, that would have been the Amestrians’ own fault, as a collective nation, for constantly giving the impression that they considered themselves superior, but if there was a voluntary aspect to the entire situation, then that would…

Change nothing. That would change nothing, because they had destroyed this place; it lived in fear of them—of him, in particular. The purported motivations of any given gesture didn’t matter. All of this was a lie. All of it was terror. All of it was the scrabbling remnants of a city full of death.

There could be no such thing as goodwill under the force of this old but upheld coercion. Amestris had to offer that first—slowly, consistently, without ever betraying it. Amestris had to extend its hand and give without expectation of reciprocation. Amestris had a great deal to make up for before it could ask for anything in return.

The after-dinner drinks granted Roy a chance to utilize another of his finest and, necessarily, least-appreciated talents, which was making it appear that he had been drinking heavily when he’d barely let any of the liquor past his lips. His compatriots were somewhat less restrained, which at least meant that once the insipid debates had died down, most of them were inclined to retire relatively early.

Roy knew that the size of his room shouldn’t strike him as obscene, but he was still new to this nonsense in all the ways that counted. Evidently, generals were supposed to feel entitled to lodgings that could comfortably fit four people. Hierarchical power never failed to make Roy’s head spin a bit, but he supposed that, just this once, it was for the best: it meant that he wasn’t bothering anyone with the light and the paper-shuffling, or risking ridicule when he settled cross-legged on the floor in his pajamas and his glasses to start reviewing his notes.

Grumman had, in fact, sent them with a diplomatic objective: Amestris was pushing through a number of policy changes that either affected or directly concerned Ishval, and this uninspiring crew of officers would be sitting down with a council of locally-based Amestrian officials—as well as the precious few Ishvalans who had been allowed to hold governmental positions—to explain the projected impacts. A few of these prospective laws were, in fact, up for review. Some of them were likely to lay the groundwork for positive results; some of them were nasty at the core but twisted until they sounded enticing. The old brass still howled to have their way, after all; and Grumman was a strategic compromiser, which was why he was likely going to keep his seat as Führer for a long time yet despite the progressive leanings behind this particular game of chess.

(Roy also had to give Grumman some credit for having a sick enough sense of humor to have said things like “I think it will be good for them to humanize you” when Roy had protested this assignment in the first place; and for meeting Roy’s response of “With all due respect, sir, I’m not sure you understand the concept of a massacre” with a very, very dry little laugh.)

Roy was not a compromiser—not when it came to matters like this. Fortunately, he _was_ a strategic bullshitter, with an almost preternatural gift for manipulating both words and people. He knew that if he played his cards right, he could subtly undermine every single proposal that he thought would hurt this city long-term.

After about two hours of slow headway into the maps, the bitterly minuscule census data, and the personnel profiles on the lawmakers here and at home, which had spawned a multitude of scrawls in the margins of Roy’s notes, the heating unit in the corner kicked on.

Roy was fool enough to be grateful for it for a moment or two: his feet had started to feel rather cold as the desert night had deepened outside, and the last of the heat stored in the walls of the building had seeped back out of the windowpanes. It would have been insufferably silly to sit here conducting this endeavor whilst wearing _socks_ , so that was out of the question, and some warm air, even if a little dusty, sounded like a minor blessing.

Approximately three minutes after that charitable thought, Roy retracted it, crumpled it up, flattened it again, spat on it, balled it up again, and discarded it: the heater banged loudly and frequently, at unpredictable intervals, like a steel drum played by a child with no sense of rhythm and an impossible quantity of enthusiasm. Even setting aside the concentration required to finish up with these policy notes, there was no chance in the world that he’d be able to sleep through such infernal clanging, which left him with two options—to tear the thing out of the wall with his bare hands and hurl it through a window; or to find some way to turn it off.

Roy stifled a sigh—less for the benefit of his wall-neighbors, who probably wouldn’t hear it over the sleep of the drunk or their own damn heaters regardless; more to deny himself the superfluous melodrama—and levered himself up to his feet, and then he crossed over to the demonic device to investigate.

No promising switches or levers occupied the top of the heater, although sweeping his hand across the surface—which was mandated by the fact that it was mounted to the wall above his head and extended down nearly to his knees, because of _course_ it was, and of _course_ it did—roused a significant quantity of dust. This time he allowed himself the sigh before adjusting his glasses and peering at the sides one at a time. The whole squinty business would have been somewhat easier if he’d left more than just the bedside lamp on, likely, but the overhead light was staggeringly bright, and he had eventually been planning to go to sleep, and…

And who the hell had put the controls for a heating unit on the _bottom_?

At least it meant that he could crouch down out of the direct blast of arid air emanating from the vents while he fiddled with it—carefully, of course; he knew a thing or two about metal and conduction and the odds of your fingerprints surviving the encounter if you didn’t respect the authority of thermodynamics.

After a few moments of scrabbling around blindly, making a face that was very likely a minor masterpiece of unintentional comedic art, something very definitively went _click_.

He straightened up, attempting to force his shoulders to release some of the tension that they’d been hoarding, and gave the heater a reprimanding look. It made a few slightly forlorn little pinging noises as the metal cooled, but he was daring to hope that he’d put an end to the worst of it.

He spared a second to gaze in an affronted sort of way at the coating of dust still smeared across one palm. He couldn’t exactly wipe it on his pajamas, and it would be insufferably rude to scrape it off onto the bedspread, and—

Something else went _click_.

He realized, while turning towards the sound, that it was the latch on the lock of the door.

The door opened just far enough to admit a young man holding a key in one hand and a silver pistol in the other. Then it fell shut behind him, and quietly _click_ ed again.

Roy stared.

The young man stared back.

It was the bellhop.

He couldn’t have been more than eighteen. The red of his eyes looked less pronounced in the dim room, and the white of his hair seemed so much less stark than in the sun—it just looked pale. The two of them were so much less different out of the light.

There is silence in Roy’s kitchen—but the thready kind that he knows won’t last.

Ed grimaces, right on cue. “You… had a spare set of gloves. _Tell_ me you had a spare set of gloves.”

“Of course I did,” Roy says, folding his hands on the table. “Under the pillow. On the opposite side of the room.”

Ed looks at him like he’s a lost cause. Roy can’t exactly argue with that.

“Figures,” Ed says. “Okay. So—what did you do?”

“What I do best,” Roy says. “Stalling.”

He’d swallowed. There hadn’t been time to clear his throat. He could see, courtesy of the clever glasses, that the safety on the side of the pistol had been shifted to the off position.

“I—” he said.

“If you move,” the boy said, voice ever so slightly shaky but remarkably cold, “I’ll send you _straight_ back to hell.” He gestured with the gun. “Put your hands up. Let me see ’em.”

That was not the single most fortuitous start to a conversation that Roy could recollect, but it was still not the worst.

Slowly, carefully, mindful of the fact that people pointing guns often failed to notice when their own instructions were somewhat contradictory, Roy raised both hands, palms out, to hold them up beside his head.

“What’s your name?” he asked.

“None of your fucking business,” the boy said, and the barrel wavered, but then he set his jaw. “Why do you care?”

“If you’re going to kill me,” Roy said, “I’d like to know who you are before you do.”

If this young man had come into the room prepared to commit murder, Roy would already be dead. The ones who knew what they were doing didn’t hesitate, and they didn’t stop to chat.

“It doesn’t matter,” the boy said. His eyes narrowed; he clenched his teeth. “I’m somebody who lost people in the war because of _you_ —just like everybody else in this fucking city. I might as well be anyone.”

“But you’re not anyone,” Roy said, softly. “You’re the only one who’s here right now. And I didn’t catch your name from Kalia downstairs when we checked in.”

Consternation shivered across the boy’s face before he tried to batten it down again. Roy had just created two contradictions to this young man’s assumptions about the human weapon that he’d walked in to destroy—first, Roy had demonstrated that killers could twist words around just as easily as anyone else; and second, he’d proved that he’d been paying attention to the nice Ishvalan girl at the front desk of the inn. One might even be persuaded to believe that Roy cared about the citizens of this place, despite what had happened—despite what he’d _done_ —in the years before.

In the silence, he darted a look over at the papers that he’d strewn across the floor—instinct made the boy with the gun to glance sideways towards them, too. None of the other Amestrian officers would be up late, studying the lay of the land, digging through the fine print of the policies. No one in their right mind would do that after a long trip into the heart of the desert unless they had a very compelling reason to invest the time, and the outcome for this city made a difference to them.

“You should be drunk,” the boy said, but the edge of helplessness creeping into his voice made it evident that he was intelligent enough to be gathering up the hints. “Why the hell aren’t you drunk?”

“Because I am very good at pretending,” Roy said slowly. His arms were starting to ache. “I knew that I had other things to do tonight before that meeting tomorrow. I’m afraid that your timing is… well. Tomorrow night would have been better.”

“Nobody ever thinks somebody’ll do something the first night,” the boy said, waving the gun for emphasis—and Roy’s breath caught despite him, and his spine tightened all at once. “That’s why I did. I dropped a better job waiting tables over at Carlton’s and started working at this place the minute that I heard you were supposed to stay here. It’s the whole _point_.”

“What’s your name?” Roy asked, softer still.

“Emre,” the boy said. Then he said “ _Fuck_ ,” and that was worse, because he sounded quite a lot like someone else that Roy knew who had taken on too much too young and paid for it by bleeding.

Roy choked that down and swallowed. “I suppose it would be a bit silly to say ‘Nice to meet you’.”

Emre stared at him as if he had grown another head—directly on top of the first one, perhaps, and it was avidly making grotesque faces to try to prompt a reaction.

“Well,” Roy said, “saying that I won’t say it is as good as saying it, so I guess I’ve functionally said it already. I’m sorry.” Either his fingertips were tingling now, or his brain was getting ahead of itself. “Spilling the water all over me was a nice touch, by the way.”

Emre struggled with speech for a moment—presumably because his upbringing was pushing him to say _Thank you_ to a mass-murderer, and everything else in him staunchly refused.

The worst of it was that Grumman was right: if Roy made himself into an interesting, idiosyncratic human being rather than the emblem of everything that Amestris had torn away and ripped to pieces, the likelihood of his survival rose dramatically. A monster was a symbol. Symbols were cold. A man was much, much more difficult to kill.

“Where’s Carlton’s?” Roy asked.

Emre glared, worked his jaw, and leveled the pistol more carefully, presumably to indicate that he was wise to Roy’s tricks. “About five blocks that way.” He jerked his head vaguely westward, and the gun moved with him.

Roy considered asking about the food, but that might remind his captor of the end goal of making sure that Roy didn’t live to try it, so he cut to the chase.

“I waited tables for a long time,” he said. “My foster mother owns a bar. It’s really not easy.”

Emre glared a little more, and then he swallowed, and then he said, “Yeah. It’s not.”

“The cook at our pub couldn’t see very well,” Roy said. He resisted the urge to curl and uncurl his fingers to force some circulation back into them. “Which… is a rather frightening reflection on his cooking, in retrospect, but it forced me to write out the tickets so clearly that I had both the nicest and the fastest handwriting in my entire class at school.”

The gun barrel trembled just slightly as Emre continued to eye him.

The silence deepened, and then sharpened, and then Emre said, “There wasn’t much left.”

Roy blinked.

“After the war,” Emre said. “After you and your fucking friends leveled this place and killed just about everybody in it. My mom shipped us off to an old friend of hers who’d gone out West—me and my sister. That’s the only reason we fucking survived, because we weren’t _here_. She’s dead—my mom. We came back a couple months after, when Lina let us, because she figured it was probably safe, and there was just—nothing. Fucking rubble. We _lived_ here. And all of it was gone. There wasn’t a school to go to. We never found Mom’s body—somebody said they saw her get shot, but there’s no records of any of it. Nobody knows. Nobody can fucking count that high. There were only a couple buildings still standing. No fucking surprise, your military wasn’t helping anybody rebuild anything—just skimming off the top, like there was anything to take. Like we had anything left to fucking lose. That’s what I came home to. Because of _you_.”

Roy breathed, slowly, three times before he was sure that he could trust his voice.

“That’s why I’m here,” he said, forcing the words out one by one. “I can’t change it. None of it can be undone. But I have finally made it far enough to try to deal with some of the damage from the inside. I can try to fix some of the things that they would break worse if we left them to their own devices. I can try to help make the best of what we have now. And I can commit a life that I shouldn’t have to making sure that nothing like this ever happens again.”

Emre gritted his teeth, squeezed his eyes shut, lowered the gun, snapped it up again twice as swiftly—

“Since I was a kid,” he said, eyes open again, and he was stepping forward, and Roy’s arms were throbbing, and his fingertips were all pins and needles, and he held his breath so that he wouldn’t flinch. “Since I was a fucking _kid_ , when I came back here to ash and smoke and death and _nothing_ —all I’ve ever wanted was to get the chance to kill you. It’s all I dreamed of. Some kids… Even here, some kids wanna go to a university, or they want to get famous, or they want to write a book or be somebody or whatever it is. Me, though? This is it.” He waved the pistol back and forth, aimlessly, and Roy held back the wince. “This was my dream. Getting the chance to fucking kill you.”

Emre paced three steps to the right, every movement jerkily mechanical; and then back, glaring at the floor this time. Then he raised his head and strode towards Roy—closer, and closer still, until there were only five—

Then four—

Then three feet of the floor left between them.

He lifted the gun again and leveled it directly at Roy’s forehead.

Remarkable thing about adrenaline—after a certain concentration of it in the blood, it simply drowned out everything else.

“I would think about this every single fucking night,” Emre said, but his voice trembled, so maybe—perhaps there was still a chance that Roy could find a way to— “About you finally, _finally_ , being as fucking terrified as we were. As my mom would’ve been. About you looking death in the fucking face and _knowing_ it was coming for you, and you deserved it, and no matter how long you’d run from Ishvala, your time was up. And He was here. And He was going to celebrate it when the light went out of your fucking murderer eyes.”

Emre held the gun out at the length of his arm, barrel so close to Roy’s skin that Roy felt _cold_ ; his skin prickled as if the metal had grazed him—

Emre staggered one step back, dropping his arm again, staring down at the gun in his hand, and this time his voice quavered harder—catching, hitching.

“All I have _fucking_ wanted since I was twelve years old was to kill you,” he said. He looked up, and a gleam of tears deepened the red of his eyes. “So why the hell is it so _hard_?”

Roy opened his mouth—too slowly.

Emre stepped up to him again, and this time the gun barrel did meet his skin—frigid, heavy, and Roy’s heart beat in every centimeter of his skin, tapping feverishly against the metal—

He didn’t want to die.

He _couldn’t_ —not here, not now, not with so much still left to do, to finish, to fix—

If it all ended here—

It _couldn’t_ just—

Emre gritted his teeth harder, blinking desperately, but the first tear slipped free and wound down his cheek anyway. “Why the hell was it so easy for _you_?”

“It wasn’t,” Roy said, keeping his voice as low and gentle and careful as he could. His back ached; his arms ached; one shift of this boy’s index finger would splatter his brains across the steel of the heater and end him in an instant. He couldn’t hear his heart anymore; the pounding of it through him everywhere felt like an endless earthquake. “The first thing that you have to kill is a part of yourself. It never comes back. You’re never whole again. You have to cut out the things that make you human, and you have to destroy them. And it’s still hard, after that. Because some of what’s left of you knows that it is fundamentally wrong.”

Roy swallowed. He weighed his options. He attempted a tiny, unassuming smile.

“Emre,” he said. “It doesn’t have to end like this. It doesn’t have to end badly for either of us.”

The boy croaked out a laugh, leaning in, pushing the gun barrel harder against Roy’s forehead; with that thrice-damned heater behind him, he couldn’t retreat; it felt like—

It felt like he’d lit his own lungs on fire. It felt like his spine was stone; his blood was electric; every heartbeat pushed the pulses out and through him faster and faster, and the smoke and the lightning would kill him if this child didn’t do it first.

“Like _hell_ ,” Emre said. “You and I both fucking know that even if I let you off, there’s no damn way that I’m getting out of here alive. They’ll just try to use it to prove all of their bullshit ideas about who we are. They have to make an example out of me. Nobody like _me_ gets to threaten someone like _you_ and fucking survive.”

“I’ll protect you,” Roy said. His tongue felt heavy, too-thick; but he had to fight through it. He had to make himself heard; had to force this victim to believe the cornered conqueror. He didn’t have a choice. “I mean that. Iver’s the only one who outranks me, but he’s scared of me, because he knows just enough about alchemy to understand what I can do, but he never knows what I’m thinking. He won’t push back. I can save you.” Roy tried to make his eyes softer by force of will; tried to look like the kind of man who kept his promises. “And I will, if you let me. I don’t want this to end here for you. Not like this. You can do so much more for your people out _there_ , Emre. You know that. It’s too late to kill who I was back then. All that either of us can do is move forward.”

“Fuck you,” Emre ground out, and another tear beaded at the corner of a crimson eye, trembled, tipped, and slithered down his face. “Fuck _you_ , Roy Mustang, you have to fucking _die_ —”

His arm tensed; the hand holding the pistol clenched tighter—

The gun against Roy’s skin was so damn cold.

Roy had no prayers to speak. He had no apologies to whisper that would make up for any of it. No words.

Emre’s arm bent; the gun barrel left Roy’s forehead—

The first sob racked Emre’s shoulders hard enough that he staggered—and then he slammed the butt of the pistol against the heater, rousing such a terrible _clang_ that Roy startled away from the sound and let his hands fall.

Emre stumbled a step away again, scrubbing at his eyes with his free hand, but the other hung at his side—letting the gun point at the floorboards, at their feet, at the papers scattered near the bed.

“ _Fuck_ you,” he choked out again. “This is the only thing—I’ve never done _anything_ ; my whole life’s been waiting—been trying to be ready for this, to _do_ this, to make it right by my mom and my friends and everybody you fucking _burned alive_ —”

“I’m sorry,” Roy said, and it hurt—the words hurt as they left him. The syllables scalded on the way up. “I know that’s meaningless, but that doesn’t make it any less true.”

Emre sobbed again.

But not loud enough to obscure the voices in the hall, and the booted footsteps that came with them.

“Emre,” Roy said. “Put the gun down.”

The red eyes fixed on him first, and then Emre’s arm rose. The gun barrel lifted again. Emre’s hand was shaking hard enough that there was a chance that he’d miss, but—

“Put it down,” Roy said, slowly raising his hands again, palms out and wide open. “Put it on the floor. I’ll talk to them. I’m good at talking. Just don’t—”

Emre drew a ragged breath. Another tear rolled over his cheekbone, glistened as it streaked down towards his jaw—

“I hate you,” Emre said.

His arm snapped up, and he fitted the gun barrel underneath his chin.

“Emre,” Roy said, barely hearing himself over the scrape of his breath and the thunder of his heartbeat as he scrambled forward— “Please d—”

The gunshot deafened him this close. Hot blood sprayed all over his outstretched hands and across his face—a fragment of bone sliced his cheek, and another nicked his jaw. It seeped into his pajamas and stuck them to his skin in an instant.

The thud of Emre’s lifeless body crumpling to the hardwood—

The cavalry blasted through the door. Roy knew what those men would look like—weapons raised, faces grim, halfway into their uniforms—which was a good thing, since he couldn’t look away from the boy on the floor.

Roy had only very rarely had to recognize just how much blood there was in a human body. His specialty didn’t call for that.

There was so much. There was too much. Thickly gushing, pooling on the floorboards, spreading towards his abandoned notes.

He couldn’t breathe.

His eyelids were sticky with the blood; he could taste it in his mouth. He couldn’t breathe, and he couldn’t move, and he couldn’t look _away_ —

“General!” someone said. “Sir—are you—are you injured? Sir—”

Someone was shaking his shoulder, and pushing a finger at his pulse in his throat. Another hand on the other shoulder; they were trying to turn him—to make him look at something else. Anything else.

It wasn’t over. It would never be over. The war, the death, the blood splattered on his palms and his fingers and his face.

This was his fault—like all of the others. This was on his conscience. This was on his soul.

He was marked. There could never be any coming back from this. There could never be any recompense. Even when a golden opportunity dropped into his hands like this, it ended with an Ishvalan child dead on the floor.

Someone snatched up the papers moments before the blood welled far enough to soak them. Would it still be hot? Would Emre’s body still be warm? Roy didn’t know—he didn’t know how this worked when you were this close to it. He didn’t know how long it took to transition between being a person and being a corpse.

Just this once, he’d thought—

It didn’t matter what he’d thought. It didn’t matter what he’d wanted. Emre was dead.

“Sir,” a soldier said, waving a hand in front of his face. “ _Sir_.”

One breath filled his lungs, and then another, and a man’s face came into focus—staring at him, startled. Something like scared.

“I’m sorry,” Roy said. His voice sounded faint—distant, and hoarse, like he’d been screaming. “I’m fine.”

He’d told a lot of lies tonight: what was one more?

In the kitchen—in the present, in the real world—Ed is watching him intently. The troubled expression doesn’t give Roy very much to go on, but he feels so drained that he doesn’t have it in him to care.

“That’s it,” Roy says. “Well—I suppose the other two assassination attempts when I was out in the city the following nights didn’t exactly help, but… that’s most of it. He was most of it.” He works his jaw, which doesn’t make it easier. “One more death I was directly responsible for. I just happened to be a nearer witness to it this time, and evidently that was enough to shatter me as a person. Bit pathetic, I know.”

“Shut your fucking mouth,” Ed says, sharply. “It’s not pathetic at all.”

He leans forward and slaps his left hand down on the table—not slowing to acknowledge the way that Roy startles—and shoves Roy’s coffee cup aside. It sloshes, but it doesn’t spill. That’s good, isn’t it? Something about this must be—

“And it hasn’t shattered you,” Ed says, eyes so damn gorgeously alight. “Not even _close_. You’re a fighter, Roy. You always have been. Just because it’s a war of attrition doesn’t mean it’s not a war—and just because it’s gonna take years of chipping away at the boulder before you can move it doesn’t mean you’re not going to get past it one of these days.” He curls his fingers into a fist on top of the table. “We’re going to win. And we’re going to carry that thing as far as we have to. All you’ve got to do is stay strong as _hell_ —and I know you are, underneath all the politics and the nicey-nicey shit. I know you’re stubborn the way me and Al are—I know it’s built into your bones not to give up fighting until you’re dead. And that’s all I’m asking of you. That’s all you have to ask of yourself.”

“I’m not like you are,” Roy says softly. “It’s… I wish I was. And the amount of faith you must have in me to think so is—”

“You never gave up on me,” Ed says, shoulders squared, mouth set, knuckles white. “And you’d never give up on your team in a thousand years. You have it in you. You would fight to the last breath for any cause that mattered enough. And you _do_. You matter. You just have to let yourself understand that.”

He means so well that it’s difficult to meet his gaze and try to deflect his earnestness.

“I don’t have the gift for tenacity that you’ve always had,” Roy says. “Well—which you’ve cultivated, to give credit where it’s due. It is… substantially more difficult, most days—”

“I know,” Ed says. “I know some days are hard as _hell_ , and there’s nothing you can do about it, and none of it feels like it makes any goddamn difference, and you just—” He sits back, sighs, and shoves his left hand into his hair. “I know that some days, it’d just be so much easier to lie down and forget about trying. But you don’t get to do that. People like you and me—anybody who wants to get anywhere—you just don’t. Sometimes you can wait the bad days out, and that’s fine. But sometimes you just gotta declare war on the entire fucking world and get through ’em like a battering ram, if that’s what it takes. The one thing that you can’t do is quit.”

Roy is tired in a way that has very little to do with the coffee that he didn’t get a chance to drink. “Ed—”

“You’ve got a hundred-percent track record of not quitting so far,” Ed says. He shoves his chair back, and it screeches on the floor, and Roy isn’t quick enough to steel himself against flinching away this time.

Ed doesn’t leave him time to dwell on it: instead, Ed leans forward across the table and lays his left hand along the line of Roy’s jaw.

“You never quit on me,” he says. “Like _hell_ am I ever going to quit on you.”

Ed hikes his right knee up onto the tabletop to give himself enough leverage to shift even closer, and then he closes his eyes and sets his forehead gently against Roy’s.

“See?” he says. “It’s that easy. You don’t have to be stubborn enough for it all by yourself anyway. You can just borrow some of mine whenever you need it.”

Roy can’t quite stop himself from smiling—just a bit. “Is that so.”

“Sure is,” Ed says. “You just…” He opens his eyes. This close, even glasses couldn’t make them more transcendent. This close, Roy’s allowed to bask in miracles. “All you gotta promise is that you’ll give it the best you’ve got. Just stay with me. Okay?”

Roy breathes, swallows.

“I’ll try,” he says. “I swear to you I’ll try.”

“Good,” Ed says, and kisses him, which tastes overpoweringly of coffee and morning breath and something quite like hope.

  


* * *

  


After the long-awaited shower, Roy comes downstairs, knotting his tie as he goes. The top half of Ed’s face appears around the doorframe leading to the living room, and then the second half of his face follows it, the better to frown at the way Roy lifts his coat down off of the coatrack.

“Where are you going?” Ed asks.

“To see Lovan,” Roy says. “I didn’t want to press him too much last night after everything that had happened to him, but if there’s anything else that he knows and can tell us, I suspect I may need it.”

Ed straightens up enough for his entire body to lean against the doorframe this time. He seems rather fond of that doorframe at the moment. Roy has half a mind to be jealous. “Do you want me to come?”

“I can handle it,” Roy says.

“I know you can,” Ed says. “Which is why that’s not the question that I asked.”

Roy looks at him.

Ed raises both eyebrows and grins.

“All right,” Roy says. “I—yes. Having some company would be nice.”

“ _Some_ company?” Ed says. “How about the _best_ company?”

“I think that will depend on how you conduct yourself,” Roy says, tugging at his lapels to settle the shoulders of his coat.

Ed attempts to suppress a grin. “I think you’d better buy me lunch if you ever wanna get my ass in bed again.”

“It wouldn’t be nearly as enjoyable without the rest of you there as well,” Roy says, in spite of the way that his heart flitters a little at the very abstract thought. “What would you like for lunch?”

“I dunno,” Ed says, sauntering over and then dropping to the floor, where he sits cross-legged to put on his boots. “Whatever Lovan wants. It’s probably been a while since he got to pick.”

Roy loves him.

It’s really not his fault.

  


* * *

  


Lovan understands the situation—even if he hadn’t quite grasped the extent of it before, the events of the previous afternoon have made it eminently clear exactly how much danger all of them are in, and exactly how deeply the corruption must be rooted.

The result is that Roy doesn’t even have to ease into asking questions: by the time he’s knocked, let himself and Ed into the rooms, called across the foyer to make their presence known, and then followed Lovan’s beckoning into the bedroom, there is already a huge word-association web of remembered details spread across the chalkboard.

After some reading, and some gesturing, and a few points of clarification, Roy drags two more armchairs into the room so that they can all sit across from the board and contemplate it for a while.

Lovan remembered a visit from an Amestrian man—average height, average build, in a black coat, wearing a hood. His comrades hadn’t let him see much more than that; he remembered the voice, but he hadn’t heard it again while he was in Central Command. The Chosen had talked about this visitor as ‘the Ally’, but they weren’t much more specific than that. The one meeting that they’d had with him inside their compound had been the week before Lovan had gone to see Alana’s speech. It was only after that meeting that the Chosen had started walking by the Immigrations building regularly—before, they’d spent more time examining the train station and the busy intersections downtown, looking at load-bearing pillars and considering how and where to maximize casualties.

“So whoever he is,” Roy says, “he chose the venue, and he talked them into changing their plans.”

Lovan nods.

Lovan has dedicated a section of the diagram to the points that Roy mentioned yesterday—namely, that the individual must outrank Roy to have overridden the orders, and that they must have had quite a bit of clout in the barracks to have pushed unsigned paperwork through in the first place.

Ed is jogging his left foot as he reads and rereads. “The thing that’s gettin’ me,” he says half-idly, eyes flicking towards that quadrant of the board and then following the lines and arrows up towards the others; “is how whoever it was found out that there was somebody there to try to kidnap in the first place. Does anybody else have to stamp that shit? The paperwork in the barracks, I mean. Or does anybody get a report of it, or a record or something?”

“I suppose Records gets a record,” Roy says, glaring at the lopsided bubble bearing some extremely vague bullet points about the visitor’s appearance, as if he can intimidate them into elaborating. “I believe that it’s not ordinarily until the end of the week, since the barracks activity isn’t considered particularly time-sensitive, but you and I both know all too well how obsessive they are about piles of data that no one will ever…”

He blinks.

“Records,” he says.

“Yeah,” Ed says. “That’s what I—”

“ _Belmor_ ,” Roy says.

He can feel them both staring at him, but he’s up and out of the chair and pacing the length of the rug regardless.

“But it can’t be,” he says. “Why would he _tell_ me? Why jeopardize Alana? Why bring Lovan to my attention in the first place?”

He stops, looking at the man in question.

“Unless,” Roy says, “he thought I’d kill you. Either deliberately, because he thought that I was hiding some old grudges from the war after all; or on accident, because I’ve been so damn jumpy after the—trip. Maybe he thought you’d catch me by surprise, and I’d react instinctively. Maybe that was his intention, but—” Roy shoves one hand up into his hair. “Why even let Alana go to work that day if he knew that the Chosen were coming? Why—”

“Because he knew that you’d be there,” Ed says. “And you’d deal with it. He probably thought that you’d kill them, too, and then there just wouldn’t be _any_ witnesses left who’d ever seen him.”

Roy stands very still. It doesn’t quite add up, but it’s getting close enough for rounding, and that…

Someday he’d really like to be happy when he’s right.

Ed runs both hands over his face. Lovan, whose expression looks rather similar, stands from his chair, crosses to the chalkboard, and writes the words _We have to be sure_.

Roy doesn’t want to consider how many Amestrians, in Lovan’s place, would insist upon certainty before condemning an Ishvalan who’d attempted to have them killed.

“I agree,” Roy says. “Which is why we’re going to set a trap that only someone with the right resources and the right suspicions would fall into.”

The door in the foyer unlocks, opens, closes, and is locked again.

“Good morning,” Chris calls. “Brought friends, did you?”

“Ludicrous prospect,” Roy says. “I don’t have friends.”

He’s folded his arms—not protectively; just… a touch… preparedly—by the time that she swans into the doorway, where she plants her feet so that he can’t run. “I hate it when you beat me to my own punchlines, kiddo. Hiya, Lovan.” Lovan smiles and nods, and then Chris’s eyes light on Ed, and Roy is doomed. “You look familiar.”

“Newspapers, probably,” Ed says. “But they lie.”

Chris smirks broadly enough to tip her cigarette at an angle that looks unsustainable. “You worked with my boy here, didn’t you?”

Ed glances, not especially subtly, between Roy and Madame Christmas, gauging Roy’s resigned expression, before he says, “Yeah.”

“Then you’re family,” she says. “So what’s the diabolical master plan?”

“We’re going to the library,” Roy says.

The silence speaks volumes, so at least that’s fitting.

“I mean,” Ed says, slowly, “I’m never gonna argue with that, but it doesn’t exactly sound like a strategy, unless you wanna last out a siege there or something. And it’s kind of a bad place for it. I thought about that once.”

“Sorry,” Roy says. “That was a bit of a leap. What I mean is—he runs Records. I can’t believe I didn’t think about it at the time, but that means that everything official that I dug up on him is meaningless. He could have doctored or removed anything that he wanted to. I suspect that he probably left me a false trail on purpose, specifically because there are things that he wanted to hide. We have to find publicly available information that he wouldn’t have been able to change.” He turns to Lovan. “You didn’t see him. Is there a chance he’s seen you? Enough to recognize your face?”

Lovan considers, then scrawls out _Only if he was there on the nights I followed Mrs. Belmor._ He smiles, slightly wryly, and adds, _They kept me away from the action._

“Well,” Roy says, “hopefully we can, too, since none of it is going to be very fun.”

“Says you,” Ed says. “When are we going to the library?”

“Now,” Roy says.

Ed glances at Lovan, subtly enough that the others may not notice it at all. “I was promised lunch.”

“Pardon me,” Roy says, attempting to modulate the dryness and mostly failing. “You’re quite right. ‘Now’ in that sentence was meant to imply ‘sometime in the future, well after food, because this certainly isn’t a matter of life and death, or anything’.”

“Everybody thinks like crap when they’re hungry,” Ed says. He sets his jaw. “We’ve got all afternoon to get the skeletons out of this guy’s closet, and I’m _real_ good at finding stuff that nobody wants me to find.”

Roy looks at him.

“Trust me,” Ed says.

“Fine,” Roy says. “Lunch first, then laying the groundwork for the defeat of the corrupt Major General.”

“Interesting,” Chris says.

Ed smirks. “Interesting’s what I do. Hey, Lovan, what’re you in the mood for?”

  


* * *

  


When they return with sustenance—Roy’s eyes-on-the-prize itch is still prickling all over his skin, but he’s trying to fake some patience—Lovan and Madame Christmas are seated at one of the tables in the foyer, upon the surface of which they are playing cards.

“How do I always forget,” Roy says, “that I can’t leave you alone for five minutes?”

“You ran into a lot of walls as a kid,” Chris says, but the swoop of the cigarette betrays the way that she’s trying not to grin. “Probably some memory damage there.”

“Is that gin rummy?” Roy asks.

“Apparently Ishvala isn’t fond of actual gin,” Chris says. “Figured this is the next best thing.”

Lovan lays his cards facedown on the table—carefully, which means that this has been going on for a while—and then scribbles something on a piece of paper.

He holds it up.

_I like her_ , it says.

“I have only myself to blame for this,” Roy says.

“Pretty much,” Ed says brightly, patting his arm. “Aren’t you glad now that there’s consolation food?”

  


* * *

  


No one at the library—even the cute girl who seems to have mistaken Ed’s disinterest for an unprecedented level of innocent ignorance, which admittedly is a reasonable mistake—bats an eyelash or raises a brow when Ed strides in and makes a beeline for the archive of newspapers. Roy follows him at a slightly less urgent-looking pace. People talk. People tell stories. The less of this that is spoken of, even in passing, even by librarians to one another, the better their chances of success.

He’s lucky in more ways than he likes to consider, sometimes: one of them, now, is that apparently nothing that Ed could do in a library looks out of place to anyone who knows him. Roy imagines that Ed would browse children’s boardbooks with the same fervor that he applies to sussing out yet another government conspiracy.

When they reach the stands on which the newspapers, rather forlornly, drape their wealths of rumor-mongering something-like-knowledge, Roy’s heart sinks to his stomach and settles there. A quick survey of the dates confirms his fears.

“Ed,” he says. “These only go back a month.”

“Of course they do,” Ed says, perfectly calmly. He’s rummaging in his pocket for some reason. “You don’t spend enough time here.”

Roy raises an eyebrow at him. “Would you believe that you’re the first person in my entire life who’s ever told me that?”

“Yes,” Ed says. “But it’s true.” He withdraws his house keys from his pocket and starts sorting through the objects on the ring. They clink against the automail fingertips. “Everything else is in the archives. Which is good, actually, ’cause if Belmor’s smart enough to think about it, he’d also be smart enough to get in here and steal documents from a public institution within the month.” He raises one rather unremarkable-looking bronze key. “I was spending so much time in the archive room that they just lent me this. Deposit was five-thousand cens, but Lieutenant-Colonel Ross let me take it out of my research budget. What year should we start with?”

“He graduated from the officers’ academy in 1892,” Roy says. “I hope we don’t need to go back that far. We’ll be here for the rest of our lives.”

“I can think of worse things,” Ed says, utterly blithely, and then he’s off towards a hallway that Roy didn’t even notice. “You can get started here and see what you find.”

It occurs to Roy that Ed’s right—but not about the newspapers, exactly. If they’re going to crack this, Roy needs to think further outside of his own instincts. He needs to leverage everything they’ve got.

They have some unusual things hidden away in the corners of this place, evidently—more than he ever imagined. Which makes him wonder…

The search takes a while—which is probably a good thing, since Ed will likely be sequestered in the archive room for several hours, given that he has nearly thirty years of newspapers to sift through—but in the end, the staggeringly complete collection of the Central City Library comes through for him.

He’s just settled down at a reading table with each of the Amestrian Military Officer Academy’s yearbooks from Belmor’s three-year stint when Ed returns. Or Roy assumes that it’s Ed, underneath a pile of newspapers nearly his own height, which he’s somehow balanced on his outstretched arms.

“Oh,” Roy says, rather stupidly he has to admit. “I thought you were going to stay down there. Possibly forever.”

“It’s not ‘down’,” Ed says from behind his enormous newsprint shield. “S’on ground level. I was disappointed, too. I wanted an archive-dungeon. And you’re not there, so here’s more interesting by default.”

Roy stares at him—or at the wall of newspapers. Perhaps Ed doesn’t realize what he’s said, and what it implies. Perhaps, in typical Ed fashion, he’s speaking directly from the heart without vetting any of the words, and the broader meaning was irrelevant to and powerless over the impulse towards honesty.

Ed likes to be alone—at least while he’s reading, especially when it’s research. Ed can turn the world off, yes, when focusing in requires it; he can raise a wall around his brain and block out any noise short of a concentrated explosion; but he still generally prefers to avoid people when he’s trying to think.

Which, as perhaps he hasn’t considered, makes stating a preference for Roy’s presence a significantly greater compliment than Roy can begin to describe.

A mountain of newspapers drops onto the tabletop, summoning up an impressive cloud of dust, which then makes Ed sneeze violently into his sleeve.

“Besides,” Ed says. “Once you’re done with those, you can help me.”

Roy wishes that he could stop himself from smiling. Weakness wears so many faces and fills so many forms.

“That sounds quite like a plan,” he says.

  


* * *

  


Belmor was the single best marksman in his graduating class.

That isn’t the sort of accolade that usually ends up gracing the first page of one’s personnel file, so it isn’t as though he’s _hidden_ it, but—

But it still makes Roy sit back in his chair as if he’s been struck in the face. He’s never even seen Belmor carrying a sidearm, let alone using one. Belmor had simply never seemed the type—that’s the true genius of it. It had never seemed like the slightest omission; it had never felt like anything was missing. Roy had never thought to look for more.

The pictures tell more of that story, in frozen, blurry black-and-white bits and pieces. Belmor had had so many friends—or colleagues posing like friends, at least—and a seemingly endless supply of roguish expressions.

“Hang on,” Ed says. “Did you ever hear about this?”

A considerable quantity of crinkling heralds the insertion of a yellowing paper between the yearbook and Roy’s glasses. He blinks to try to bring it into focus.

It’s the domestic politics section. The first headline reads _Drachman Embassy’s visit raises more questions than it answers_ , indicating at least one rather outspoken journalist—which wouldn’t even have been a possibility after Bradley had tightened his stranglehold on this place during the war.

It occurs to Roy after a moment of vague wonder that that probably isn’t what Ed wanted him to see. He skims down along the page, and—

Almost immediately, Belmor is beaming up at him again—several years older now, but no less self-assured than he’d been in the yearbook pages. Roy doesn’t recognize the man directly beside him, who is shaking hands with Bradley himself.

This headline says _Führer nominates Ishvalan peacekeeping committee_.

“That’s how he knew,” Roy says, more because his mouth is too numb to bite back the words than because he thinks that they really need saying. “About the Chosen, about…”

“That’s what I figure,” Ed says. He starts shuffling through the next few papers at the top of his stack. “Hang on—here’s another one.”

Somehow it doesn’t surprise Roy that with Ed involved, the onerous research has begun to resolve itself into conclusions at breakneck speed.

“May I?” he asks, reaching out with both hands, and Ed gives him half the pile.

  


* * *

  


The Ishvalan Peacekeeping Committee had crumbled after a single ill-fated expedition—or at least, as far as Roy can tell from the snippets that survived being swallowed by the increasing censorship of the press, that’s the gist of the story. Only a few more photos slipped through the cracks to preserve it. In them, Belmor’s colleagues looked chagrined and exhausted, but the man himself mostly looked… thoughtful. Frustrated, possibly, but as though he was already channeling that experience towards another goal.

Resourcefulness and persistence is a combination that often lands you in precisely this kind of a mess.

Roy resurfaces into the real world a few sheets of newsprint later, head still swimming a bit, and lets his gaze settle on Ed as he tries to disentangle his thoughts from one another.

Edward Elric, engrossed in a newspaper, head at an angle, eyes sharply focused and intent, with his ponytail curled around to hang over his shoulder as a casual reminder of just how much hair there is to drag one’s fingers through, is simply too beautiful to be believed. The universe shouldn’t make allowances for this sort of thing. It shouldn’t be possible. And it definitely shouldn’t be _Roy’s_.

“I’m sorry,” Roy says.

“Quit saying that all the damn time,” Ed says without looking up from the page. “For what?”

“This is a terrible first date,” Roy says.

“Is it?” Ed asks. He glances up, and he’s wrinkling his nose, and Roy’s heart swan-dives into a lake of melted marshmallow. “I’ve had worse. Lots worse. I mean, there’s books, and we had lunch, and… Hey.” He points the automail index finger, which is the one he usually uses for silently accusing people of trying to get away with something. “It’s not our first date anyway. We went to the opera.”

“But we weren’t dating,” Roy says.

“It was still a date,” Ed says. “Maybe it was a friend-date, but it was definitely a date. You got me fucking _chocolates_.”

“Does that still count if it was a matter of negotiation rather than a gift?” Roy asks.

“I don’t care,” Ed says. “They were good either way.”

He looks at Roy, rather pointedly.

Roy looks back.

“All right,” Roy manages. “Well—I’ll… still try to do better next time. If that sounds acceptable to you, at any rate.”

“Dumbass,” Ed says, ducking to the newspaper again as if he can hide the fact that he’s grinning. “Get back to work.”

  


* * *

  


The pay phone just across the street from the library is as good as any. A woman named Bethany, whom Roy had attempted to date before… whom Roy had attempted to date back when it was relatively feasible, had used to laugh at him for always filling his pockets up with change. He’d stopped, for a while, despite the risk; but then on the day outside the Führer’s office that Ed had asked him for the money to make a call…

Well. He carries enough, these days, and he has all of the important numbers memorized.

“Hello?” Riza says.

“Good afternoon,” Roy says.

“If you’re calling,” she says, “it must not be.”

“That is a slanderous lie,” Roy says.

“Is it,” Riza says.

“All right,” he says. “It’s true. But I maintain that it’s slanderous.”

“Of course you do,” she says. “What can I do for you, sir?”

He has never deserved her. “I need you to get to the firing range around two o’clock on Monday.”

Riza pauses, and then she says, “And?”

“And find out,” Roy says, “as much as you can about the last gun that General Belmor used there.”

Riza pauses for a moment longer this time. “That is… not exactly small talk, sir.”

“It is if you play your cards right,” he says. “Just say…” Roy composes backwards from the reaction that he wants. “Say, ‘Sorry, I know this is a longshot, but—’ Ah… no. Find a way around the pun. ‘Sorry, this is a bit out of the blue, but I heard from General Mustang that General Belmor was raving about his experience this morning. Do you suppose that I could give it a try?’”

He can almost hear Riza’s eyes narrowing. “What makes you so sure he’ll be in first thing in the morning, ranting about firearms?”

“Call it intuition,” Roy says, because he was born awful and will die awful, and this part in between hardly gives him a choice. “I hope you don’t have plans for Monday night.”

Riza sighs. “You say that as though I’ve ever had plans on a Monday night in my life.”

“Things change,” Roy says.

“Slowly,” Riza says. “And people change slower still.”

He tries to minimize the smugness in his smile. “Is that an ‘I’ll be there’?”

She sighs again, louder. He’s rubbing off on her. “Don’t make me spell it out, Roy.”

“Thank you,” he says. “I mean that.”

“I know you do,” Riza says. “If you didn’t, I wouldn’t be here.”

Roy supposes that she probably means _here_ in a larger sense, referring to her life on the whole, but all the same…

“Would you like to join us for dinner, by any chance?” he asks. Ed has wandered over from a thorough survey of the hedges alongside the library stairs, having apparently sensed that the conversation is winding down at last. “I believe that the plan is to collect something to eat and bring it over to Lovan, whom Madame Christmas is currently teaching how to cheat at cards, so we may just make an evening of it.”

Riza pauses. “‘We’? You and Ed?”

“Yes,” Roy says. “I’m not brave enough to go in there alone. We could come and pick you up, if you like.”

“After we feed the cats,” Ed says.

“After we feed the cats,” Roy says.

“It _has_ been a while since I’ve had the pleasure of watching Chris make you weep into your cards,” Riza says. “All right. I’m in.”

“Splendid,” Roy says.

  


* * *

  


It is.

That’s the worst part.

It’s splendid, and then it’s late, and then he’s driving back through the moonlight-silvered streets, and Ed had a very tall glass of cider and won’t stop patting Roy’s arm to get his attention every time that that incomparable brain waylays a worthwhile thought.

Roy has always wanted to be this—or something like this; something he never quite had the vocabulary for. He has always wanted someone to be excited to tell him everything that they felt at any given moment. He has always wanted to be someone’s first choice to confide in, to share with, to spread some spark of elation to. He has always wanted someone—someone extraordinary, someone _remarkable_ , in the way that Ed is both—to pick him out of the crowd and say _You’re the one that I want to let in, and the one that I want to bring in on my brilliance_.

Roy was second-best so many times—to Maes, to a dozen others. He was available. He was charming. He was pleasant, and present, and of course he lent an ear.

This is different. He can feel that, profoundly.

And it terrifies him.

Of course he hasn’t forgotten Alphonse, or Winry: he knows that he’s not the first person whose sleeve Ed has ever seized in a moment of inspiration. But with Ed, he gets the sense that it’s not about first, or second, or prizes. It’s not a division of territory. It’s not a compromise.

Ed loves so _much_ that no one around him has to be less. No one that Ed cares for ever has to settle. No one who offers him affection will ever receive anything other than an equivalent exchange.

Roy knows, too, that he can never afford to get comfortable—that the world won’t let him have it, or at least won’t let him keep it; Roy knows that merely touching something wonderful is more than he deserves.

But it’s getting harder and harder to remember to be careful every time that Ed glances at him, sideways, and looks surprised and delighted that he’s there.

  


* * *

  


He left Ed a note on the pillow, like some sort of soppy romantic finally set free—which is _far_ from the truth, of course: he is a soppy romantic finally fixed upon a target that hasn’t turned tail and run for the hills.

He doesn’t suppose that Ed will treasure the note overmuch, but he also put the coffee on before he slipped out the front door, which will likely make up the difference.

He lays the flowers down and sits where he can watch the breeze ripple through the grass of the graveyard—whisking the stalks one way and then the other, smoothing them and ruffling them like the fur of some enormous animal, stroked and then scuffed and then stroked again.

“You did a very bad job of talking me out of it,” Roy says. “Not a single ill omen. Not so much as a flickering light for a portentous sign. I’m just going to assume that I can take that to mean either that you approve, or that you’re having too much fun wherever you ended up to care.”

He smiles—not at the headstone. Maes isn’t there. Sort of at the air—at the wind, and at the sky.

“The second one doesn’t really sound like you,” Roy says. “You’d just let me fall on my own sword again under ordinary circumstances, but this… This is _Ed_. You wouldn’t let me do this to Ed unless you thought that it might just work, would you?”

He doesn’t expect an answer, which is good, because he doesn’t get one. He doesn’t imagine that the answer would be particularly polite or involve any flattering remarks about his personal virtues in any case.

Roy takes a breath, holds it, watches the wind, and lets it out again.

“Thank you,” he says. “For teaching me how to love someone. And for teaching me how to survive when that wasn’t enough. And for teaching me how to keep at it for years, for its own sake, rather than in anticipation of getting something in return. It’s different. And it’s so much more dangerous, in some ways, but it’s also just so… good. Thank you for making sure that I never forgot that part. I think that there is a tiny but doggedly-increasing possibility that this is going to be worth the wait.”

He levers himself up to his feet—which is rather undignified, but so is clapping a headstone as if it’s a man’s shoulder and then smiling at it, which are the next two items on the agenda in any case.

“If he and I don’t kill each other,” Roy says, “I’m looking forward to finding out—which in itself is a gift.” He pauses. “If we do kill each other, then I’ll see you rather sooner than I anticipated, so that’s all right, too.”

He looks down at the flowers splayed out on the grass, and then up at the sky.

“It should be you,” Roy says. “It should be you standing here wishing I was around. You had so much—you’d _built_ so much. If it had to happen, it should have been me. The world doesn’t need more men like me, Maes. Never has. Not really. Not the schemers. It needs more fathers and husbands. It needs more friends. It needs more exuberant and unconditional love.” He grazes his hand along the top of the headstone one more time as he starts for the path towards the gates. “I’ll try, though. To do that—to do some of the things that you would have done. To make up some of the difference. For both of us. For who we were, and who we would have been. How does that sound?”

He knows that it’s the worst kind of confirmation bias, but he can’t help that the next gust of wind that whirls around him like a swift embrace feels an awful lot like an answer.

  


* * *

  


“You’re going out _again_?” Ed asks from the couch, where he’s buried himself under about a dozen of Roy’s rarest books. The position of the one resting atop the automail foot looks slightly precarious, but Ed takes the safety of books very seriously, so Roy trusts him with it. “C’mere, I wanna see if you have a fever. It’s _Sunday_ , Mustang.”

Dutifully, Roy crosses the living room and sits down on the floor beside the couch so that Ed can lay the back of his left hand against Roy’s forehead without dislodging any literature.

“Shit,” Ed says.

“That bad?” Roy asks.

“No,” Ed says. “I miscalculated. I completely backed myself into a corner here. I can’t say ‘You’re fine’. I can’t say ‘You’re hot’. I can’t say anything without giving you one for free.”

Roy can’t help grinning. It doesn’t hurt that Ed’s hand migrates immediately from his forehead to the shell of his ear, fingertips grazing around the curve and then flirting with the hair just behind it. It’s an uncharacteristically tender little gesture, and Ed so rarely reaches out _first_.

Someone, possibly many someones, taught him not to. Someone told him that they didn’t want his touch.

Roy keeps trying to prove otherwise—to show him, empirically, in a way that science would support. Roy keeps trying to offer first, and go on offering, gently, even when Ed hesitates, or flinches, or shies away. Roy keeps trying to make sure that Ed knows that both arms and the full extent of Roy’s mind are open. Ed makes him feel safer than almost anyone to be the miserable mess of a human being that he is. What he wants most is to return the favor.

Ed is smarter than anyone else that Roy has ever met, despite the occasional disconnect when it comes to social cues, and it seems like he may be starting to get the hint.

“Don’t worry,” Roy says. He twists to kiss Ed’s retreating fingertips and then doles out a slow, tragically cheesy wink. “I’ll _give you one for free_ later. Any time you want.”

Ed’s cheeks darken, but then he smirks. “Can’t just give it to me now? Where the hell are you going, anyway?”

“The battlefield will decide how tomorrow falls out,” Roy says. “I’m not sure precisely what we’ll need, but I think I’ll know it when I see it.”

Ed shifts to resettle one of the books. “You want me to come?”

“No,” Roy says. “I want you to stay here and keep preparing such a display of heretofore unfathomable brilliance that the certification committee will have no choice but to follow your lead after dropping to their knees and kissing your feet.”

Ed arches an eyebrow at him. “How’d you know I wasn’t just gonna blow the whole day napping on your couch?”

“You’re cuddling one of the medical alchemy books that Marcoh gave me,” Roy says. “Just a hunch.”

Ed smirks again, slowly, with a flash of teeth. “Jealous?”

“Inconsolably,” Roy says. He catches both of Ed’s hands, the better to kiss the left palm, then the right, before he stands. “Not quite sure when I’ll be back.”

“That’s okay,” Ed says. “I probably won’t move except to pee and maybe to make coffee.”

“Hopefully not at the same time,” Roy says.

Ed raises the other eyebrow. “That might depend on how long you’re gone.”

“Oh, dear,” Roy says.

“That reminds me,” Ed says. “We gotta talk about this pet name problem of y—”

“My heavens, it’s so terribly late,” Roy says, striding swiftly for the door. “I’d better be off; I’ll call you if it’s looking like I won’t be back before it’s dark. Have fun honing your colossal intellect while I’m gone.”

“All I heard was ‘you’re colossal’,” Ed calls after him.

“Close enough,” Roy says.

  


* * *

  


That night, Ed’s watching _him_ from across the pillow for a change.

Well—Roy supposes that, by definition, they’re watching each other. He wouldn’t be able to observe any external watching otherwise.

“Are you all right?” Roy asks.

“Probably not,” Ed says. “But about as right as usual, if that’s what you’re asking.”

Roy makes a face at him. Ed grins.

Then the smile fades, and Ed chews on the inside of his bottom lip for a moment before he says: “How do you think tomorrow’s going to go?”

“I’ve tried to factor in every contingency that I could think of,” Roy says. “I don’t… especially want to be much more optimistic than that. The universe tends to wreak bloody vengeance on you if you ever have the audacity to think that you’re clever.”

“Yeah,” Ed says, dryly. “I’ve noticed that.”

“Are you ready?” Roy asks.

“For what?” Ed says. “Saving your ass? I mean, I’ve got an even more vested interest in it now that I’ve seen you naked and all that shit, so—”

Roy claps one hand to his chest and attempts to look as offended as possible. “Are you implying that you weren’t interested in saving my ass until you’d tapped it?”

Ed stares for what feels like a very long half-second before the laugh starts to ripple through him. It starts low in his spine, radiating upward, and by the time it’s racked his shoulders, Roy can hear the first impression of it slipping out between his lips, and the only possible reaction is to lean in and kiss him and swallow the rest and let the rhythm of it shiver through the both of them.

Roy isn’t optimistic about tomorrow: he is _desperate_. He is desperate, because he has everything to lose.

Which means, of course, that he will win. He will win at any cost. He has to.

He won’t lose this. Not a chance.


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi, friends! Sorry this update was, like several previous ones, a ways behind! It fell victim to many of the same reasons, including the fact that I didn't want to rush the editing. ♥
> 
> Thank you all so, so much for your support of this fic; it really does mean the world. ♥ We only have one more chapter to go on this thing, so I've updated the count accordingly! I'm so grateful to everyone who has spent so much time with it so far. ♥
> 
> P.S. I wrote this a long time ago now, but the FIGHT SYSTEMIC RACISM TO MAKE THE WORLD BETTER FOR EVERYONE message that I was tapping into is very, very relevant today.

The morning dawns misty and cool and full of a thousand little things that Roy must do well and quickly.

“I’m so terribly sorry,” he says, laying the page down crisply and offering the girl at the desk his single most winsome smile. “I realize that this is very short notice, but I’m in a bit of a bind, and I’m hoping that you can save me.”

She smiles back, looking only about seventy percent charmed out of her wits. Damn. He’s losing his edge. “What can I help you with, General Mustang, sir?”

“I need two additional officers for a task this evening,” Roy says. “I’m afraid that it’s extremely time-sensitive—prisoner transfer. Bit of an emergency, as it happens, and I really do apologize for dropping this into your lap.”

Eighty. Eighty-five. “I think we can handle that.”

“Bless you,” he says. “You are an absolute gem, I hope you know.” He swivels the papers around. “Everything should be in order, but I’m afraid that I’m going to have to beg you to put it through as soon as you’re able to—if it can be processed in the next hour or two, so that I have time to find the men and brief them fairly thoroughly, that would be a greater gift than I can describe, Corporal.”

She starts skimming down the utterly unnecessary form. “I’ll do my very best, sir. Final copy should get to Records within two hours at the latest, I think, but we might be able to get the names of the men to you earlier than that. Will that give you that enough time?”

“Certainly,” he says. “It’s Corporal Wellesley, isn’t it? Sara Wellesley.”

She blushes. She’s still only at about ninety-five percent charmed silly now, and that was hard-won. Can Roy blame the insufficient quantity of coffee for dulling the wattage of his smiles? “I—yes, sir. I… I’m surprised you—”

“Remembered your name?” he asks, trying to make this grin downright blinding. She doesn’t need to know that there’s a staff evacuation roster on the wall if you approach this desk from the side nearer to the emergency exit, which lists the shifts and the personnel who fill them. “Officers with a combination of competence, intellect, and attractiveness are rarer around here than you’d think. I’m glad we have you with us, Corporal.”

Her face is on fire. Poor dear. If she pulls this off as promised, though, he really means it. “I—oh. I—well. Thank you. Thank you, sir.”

“Thank _you_ , Corporal,” he says, starting for the hall. “I can’t tell you how much I appreciate your help.”

The rest of that sentence is _because honesty would subvert my spiderweb_ , but she doesn’t need to know that, either.

  


* * *

  


Time stops for no man; and there’s no rest for the wicked; and sometimes one must execute complicated maneuvers to lay the groundwork of a plan before one’s body has processed nearly enough caffeine.

By noon, Roy has briefed Warrant Officers Keck and Dulé and informed them that they will need to rendezvous in his office at about four thirty for their extremely important assignment, in order to give everyone time to move out. He would feel a bit bad for what he’s going to do to them if it wasn’t necessary, and if they weren’t going to be clocking in quite a bit of easy overtime. For good measure, he also called ahead for a delivery of dinner for them from the nicest Cretan restaurant in town.

Roy’s team has their orders and all of the maps that they’ll need to execute them, which just leaves the team member who isn’t, technically speaking, on Roy’s team.

A part of Roy is expecting to meet Ed in the hallway, given the good chance that the uncontainable prodigy in question will be on the way up by now to ask what their lunch plans are.

Hallway it is, as it happens—but Roy had not expected to spot Ed up against the wall of it.

A closer look makes it clear that that’s poor phrasing, though: Ed isn’t cornered, literally or figuratively. Ed is backed up against the wall because he’s _holding_ back.

Roy can only assume that the four young men forming a loose half-circle around him are either the original instigators of the first fight, or very loyal friends thereof. Ed could, of course, take all of them in his sleep, and/or with the automail arm tied behind his back—but not without some incontrovertible damage either to them or to the government property that they’re all standing on and wearing.

There’s a strange but fierce surge of pride in Roy’s chest for an odd moment: Ed has grown so much. Ed has _learned_ so much.

There’s a sadness to it, too. Roy needed to leash him, for both of their own good and both of their own safety.

But Roy never meant to _tame_ him. Sometimes he wonders if that’s what he’s done.

Ed spots him before the others do—partly just as a matter of physical angles, given that Roy’s coming up the hall, and half of the ring of military miscreants has their backs directly to him; but partly because Ed actually knows how to win a fight, rather than just picking one when things don’t go his way. Ed knows how much one’s surroundings matter, and how much unpredictable interference other human beings can cause.

It takes the other boys a full, uninterrupted second to notice the flick of Ed’s eyes in Roy’s direction, and _then_ they turn. On an actual battleground, these children wouldn’t stand a chance.

“What do you want, Mustang?” Ed asks.

Perfect.

“Only a moment of your time, Major,” Roy says.

Whether Ed’s greeting was a reflex or a deliberate maneuver, he just demonstrated that he can sass a Brigadier General and get away with it. That’s a kind of power that his adversaries can only dream of, and it proves past a shadow of a doubt that Ed’s friends are more dangerous than theirs.

Roy smiles, blandly, at the assembled company, releases his hands from where he’s held them clasped behind his back, and folds his arms across his chest instead. The medals will gleam, just in case they didn’t count the stripes, and he’s wearing his gloves. “Is there a problem here, gentlemen?”

“Only that you keep tryin’ to get me to do work for you off the clock,” Ed says.

Roy gives him a look.

Ed smirks back.

Ed does not require a rescue, and every person in this hallway knows it.

“Shame on me,” Roy says. He offers the aggressors—who are doing their unimpressive best not to look equal parts gobsmacked and terrified—another chilly smile. “Can you spare Major Elric for a few minutes?”

One manages to swallow, salute, and say, “Yes, sir,” which is more coherent than Roy expected.

Ed doesn’t wait for them to move—he starts striding right towards Roy, head high and shoulders straight, without even glancing at them. They have to scatter hastily to part far enough to admit him, which…

That, too, is power. Subtle, sometimes; and simultaneously unmistakable.

“I was taking care of it,” Ed mutters to Roy as they walk away.

“I know,” Roy says. “But a bit of extra intimidation might help, since apparently they’re too thick to get the memo that you’re a thousand miles out of their league. And regardless of all that, this is for you.”

He offers the folded papers out sideways, nodding to another officer who’s passing them and saluting at the same moment that he moves his hand.

“Besides,” Roy says as Ed takes it. “I’m hungry. You can wage more of the agonizingly slow war against nepotism and injustice after lunch.”

“Shut up,” Ed says. He unfolds the paper in both hands, the better to focus on it with the usual sniper-sight intensity. Roy catches his shoulder to steer him out of the way of another oncoming officer—Ed doesn’t even seem to notice; he just lets Roy’s hand guide him leftward as they keep walking. “So if this stupid plan of yours _does_ work, is there a bar around the corner somewhere? I think I’m going to need a drink after this.”

“I’ll take care of it,” Roy says.

“Guess I could always bring a flask,” Ed says.

Roy eyes him. “One of my flasks that you repossessed without permission, do you mean?”

That garners Ed’s attention away from the paper for a second—just long enough to wink.

“Exactly,” he says.

“You’re a filthy thief,” Roy says, although it comes out even fonder than he intended.

Ed glances ahead of them and then behind to scan for passersby before he elbows Roy, more than a little playfully.

“I’ll show you ‘filthy’,” he says.

“I look forward to it,” Roy says.

  


* * *

  


Keck and Dulé are relatively young, relatively inexperienced, and relatively unambitious, but they’ve both been enlisted for several years, which makes them perfect for this purpose.

It also means that they’re staring down at the contents of the box in unmitigated dismay, because they don’t know how to hide their feelings yet.

“I really am very sorry about all this,” Roy says in the breeziest of his conciliatory voices. “But you know how it is.” Clearly they don’t. “If I hadn’t fibbed a little, they never would have put that request through, and then I’d be in deep trouble here. It _is_ an emergency. Just not quite the kind that I described to Records.”

Slowly, in remarkable unison, both officers look up from the box to gaze at him, already resigned to their fate.

“I was visiting the late Brigadier General Hughes’s family on my way in, you see,” Roy says, letting some of the natural wistfulness filter through. “And I’d spent half the night organizing these files, but his beautiful little daughter—Elysia, do you remember the photos?—wanted to play, and she was pulling at my cavalry skirt, and I lost my balance, and my two choices were to trip over her or to throw the box of files so that I could catch myself. I wish I didn’t need them by tomorrow when we’ve got something that we have to take care of tonight, but…” He sighs and spreads his hands. “I’m afraid, gentlemen, that that’s were we are. I sent out for food for you, though, and Sergeant Fuery will be here to help you for as long as you need.”

In several weeks, it may occur to these poor saps that children grow, and the toddler that they remember from the voice echoing in the halls and the photographic ambushes _must_ be old enough not to be biting the ankles of men holding boxes of files anymore.

Then again, it may not. Most people take their own experiences—and their superior officers—at face value. Besides, who in their right mind would tell a lie based in a truth and then cover it with another lie?

“Thank you for your noble service, men,” Roy says. “Sergeant, please treat them like you would treat your brothers.”

“I’m an only child,” Fuery says.

“Make it up,” Roy says.

“Yes, sir,” Fuery says, struggling not to smile. “Learned from the best, sir.”

“Making it up is half of government,” Roy says. He gives Keck and Dulé a flashbulb grin. “I’ll hope I can trust you gentlemen not to repeat that.”

“Yes, sir,” one of them manages, sounding as though the emotional whiplash may have guaranteed that he won’t remember much of this conversation at all.

“Excellent,” Roy says. “Enjoy dinner. It should be nice. Good luck and godspeed.”

The gleam of amusement in Fuery’s eye fades at the last bit—Fuery knows that battlefields don’t play favorites.

He stands a little taller and snaps off a parting salute anyway. “See you soon, sir,” he says gamely.

“You’ll barely even notice that we were gone,” Roy says. He turns to Riza, who has been standing in the doorway putting up with this awful little pageant the entire time. “Shall we, Lieutenant?”

“I think it would be wise, sir,” she says.

“Then let’s,” Roy says.

  


* * *

  


The others are already in position, and Roy knows that he can count on them to move at the designated time. That leaves him alone on this street corner for the second time in two days—although, of course, yesterday he was actively scouting, rather than leaning against the glass wall of the pay phone with his collar turned up against the wind, scanning the streets for Ed.

The figure that Edward Elric cuts—even dressed in black jeans and a dark gray jacket, with the hood up over most of his indomitable hair—catches Roy’s eye instantly. Everyone carries themselves uniquely, and Roy does count identifying people from a distance as another of his undeserved gifts, but with Ed…

With Ed, it’s a hell of a lot more than just the way he walks. It’s a hell of a lot more than his size; it’s more even than the shape of him. He has his own gravity. He emanates significance. He _matters_.

Roy has to hope, for Ed’s safety, that that isn’t true for everyone—that Ed will be able to pass unnoticed when he needs to; that he draws Roy’s eye distinctly in part because Roy knows who he is, and what he’s done, and what still lies before him.

As Ed approaches, even in the failing light, even without glasses on, Roy can see the vestiges of the black eye from the first encounter with those newfound foes. It is a crime that bruises can look so good on Ed, given what they always mean. The fading violet underscoring the gold of his eye transforms a shiner from a fistfight into something altogether uncommon, something bordering on mystical, and—

And there isn’t time for any of this nonsense when Roy has a job to do, and a lot of hides to save, likely including his own.

He offers a quick quirk of a smile, and then he steps into the phone booth and dials the direct line.

“General Mustang’s office,” Fuery’s voice says.

“We’re here,” Roy says. He draws his watch out of his pocket. “Just about ten minutes to go.”

“Roger that,” Fuery says. “And… rolling. Any time you like, sir.”

“Thank you,” Roy says. “Please convey my sincerest apologies and deepest appreciation to the lackeys.”

“Permission to choose a different word, sir?”

“Granted.”

“Thank you, sir,” Fuery says. “Best of luck out there.”

“Luck has very little to do with it,” Roy says.

“BS, sir,” Fuery says, and there’s a grin in his voice. “See you soon.”

“See you soon,” Roy says, and hangs up the phone.

Ed has wandered over to the wall of the building and started to run the fingertips of his left hand lightly across the brick. He knocks his knuckles against it, scowls at it, and then looks up at the rickety fire escape making its spindly way up to the roof.

Roy steps out of the phone booth, fishes in his pocket for his watch again, and glances at it as he heads over to join Ed in scrutinizing the structure that they’re about to work with. They have just under nine minutes, which should time out just about right.

“You get the architectural plans for this place?” Ed asks. “Looks pretty standard, but sometimes they cut corners in industrial districts, and you never know whether you’re going to get enough alumina and iron oxide to play with in a case like that.”

“My dear Edward,” Roy says, reaching into his jacket pocket, “when have I ever let you down?”

“I’d read you the list if we weren’t in a hurry,” Ed says. He snatches the proffered paper all the same, of course. “Thanks. How’re we doing on time?”

“About the same as always,” Roy says.

“None to spare?” Ed says, squinting at the sheet in the dim light. Roy tries to step sideways so that he won’t block any light from the streetlamps without emphasizing his awareness of the impact of his height.

“Precisely,” he says.

Ed folds the paper again and shoves it into the back pocket of his jeans, which is… distracting. They can’t afford that, either.

Ed claps his hands together and starts to extend the left towards the bricks of the wall.

Then he hesitates.

Then he looks at Roy.

“You sure about this?” he asks.

“Too late not to be,” Roy says. “It’s already in motion.”

Ed swallows, breathes, runs the tip of his tongue along his upper lip, and glances towards the phone booth. “I—okay, I know—we don’t have time, but—there’s—stuff I’ve been wanting to say, and—”

“Later,” Roy says, softly.

Ed meets his eyes again, and neither of them has to say _Later isn’t a promise: it’s a privilege_.

“Do you know what you’re doing?” Ed asks. “Are you sure that this is even gonna _work_?”

Roy smiles. “I can handle it.”

“You always say that,” Ed says. “And it’s always bullshit.”

“It’s the best I’ve got,” Roy says.

“I can’t believe that you conned me into this,” Ed mutters. “Fucking batted your eyelashes and did the face thing—” Roy would really, really like to know what ‘the face thing’ is, not least so that he can better abuse this heretofore unrecognized power, but now isn’t the time. “—and suckered me into jumping right into the fire with you like _always_.”

“I’m sorry,” Roy says.

Ed glares at him. “I’m not.” He looks at the wall, grits his teeth, turns to Roy again—with so _much_ still unspoken, churning in the turmoil of his eyes— “Roy—just—”

“ _Later_ ,” Roy says, and that darkens the glare, which makes Roy’s heart squeeze, which never fails to make him do such stupid, stupid things.

Tonight, the stupid thing is reaching out, catching the front of Ed’s jacket in one hand, and drawing him in to kiss him—hot and deep and meaningful and far, far too brief.

He releases his grip, draws back, and looks Ed in the eyes again.

“We need to go,” Roy says.

Ed makes an exaggerated face. “Tyrant,” he says.

“Brat,” Roy says.

“Come the fuck on, then,” Ed says, and he presses his palms together and then flattens them both on the wall.

Roy is ninety-eight percent positive that Ed, in all of his untold alchemical genius, could have made the metal platform that he has extracted from the wall a fraction larger without incident. Another alchemist might need to exercise caution with the relative compositions, to ensure that the bricks of the wall wouldn’t disintegrate after losing too much of a critical component, but Ed will have calculated all of that—as well as the thickness required to support his and Roy’s combined weight—in a matter of seconds and blown straight through to expanding it as far as it can go.

Roy suspects that this particular allocation of surface area—he steps on, shuffles in as close to Ed as humanly possible without their corporeal forms merging into one, and grasps onto Ed’s jacket for leverage—does not push the limits of physics as much as Ed might do in other circumstances.

“Cozy?” Ed asks. The light betrays a faint trace of a smirk as he grazes his hand along the brick, and the platform starts to rise.

“You,” Roy says, “are remarkable.”

“Thanks,” Ed says.

“I’m not entirely sure that was a compliment,” Roy says.

“Too bad,” Ed says. “It is now.”

If this is vengeance for the kiss, Roy can think of much, much worse retributions than having to hold tight to Edward Elric lest they both fall to their deaths.

He can’t maneuver enough to check his watch without jeopardizing the delicate balance as they make their way up the wall, ushered ever higher by the softly-crackling pale blue light of Ed’s alchemy humming around them, but he’s been counting in his head. They should be right on time.

Ed slows the platform to a gradual stop near the lowest landing of the fire escape and the last switchbacking flight of stairs leading up to the roof. The control itself isn’t surprising, given what Ed is capable of, but the sheer finesse would be unthinkable for a boy who used to drop the occasional building and call it collateral damage.

Realistically, the odds that someone on the roof could hear them are prohibitively low, but Roy prefers to do all of his gambling in the planning stages—not when the chips are down, and the stakes are high. He releases his grip on Ed’s jacket, strokes Ed’s hair back, and then puts first one hand, then both, on the railing of the fire escape. He plants one foot solidly, tests it as well as he can, and then climbs onto the grating.

Ed mouths something that looks like _I’m right behind you_.

Roy knows that—these days, he knows it better than ever. With Ed behind him, he can be something like himself again.

Tonight needs that Roy. Tonight needs the Roy Mustang with the indestructible drive to try to set things right.

He takes the stairs as swiftly as he can while keeping his footsteps almost inaudible, pausing at the top to peer over the low concrete wall that rims the roof.

The figure by the wall over to the right kneels right up against the barrier on that side, with the barrel of his rifle settled on top of the cement to stabilize his shot.

The wind is loud enough up here to cover some minor scuffling sounds as long as Roy stays quiet. He can only hope that it isn’t too loud when it counts.

Carefully, he hoists himself up onto the wall and climbs over, placing his feet on the concrete of the roof one at a time before he gently easies his weight onto them.

He crosses half the distance cautiously—one deliberate step after another, glancing down and settling his boots each time so that they won’t grind in the grit and betray him with the noise.

And then he waits.

There can’t be more than a minute left now. He doesn’t want to move too much; doesn’t want to fumble for his watch, and he can’t afford to take his eyes off of the target. Better men have died for a moment’s inattention.

So he waits.

He counts the heartbeats on instinct as they sing through him, harmonizing in the tips of his fingers and the meat of his palms where his gloved fists are clenched; crescendoing in his ears and the back of his skull as the rhythm in his ribcage thunders on—

The man crouched by the wall straightens suddenly, as if taken aback. He peers through the sniper sight for another moment, and then he sits back.

Belmor will have just seen two uniformed men in black-brimmed hats leading a tall, pale-haired prisoner across the paved courtyard below. The prisoner will have been wearing a traditional pale pink scarf with dark lines, wrapped around his neck and pulled up over his nose. Halfway across, one of his escorts will have reached over and stripped it away.

Belmor has done his research on Roy Mustang—enough to recognize Vato Falman’s face. Enough to infer that the escorts aren’t the men Roy that requisitioned for a prisoner transfer which hasn’t taken place. Enough to realize what that means.

Roy uncurls his fists and presses the first two fingertips of his right hand against the pad of his thumb.

“Good evening, General,” he says.

Belmor turns, trying to twist his grimace into something a bit more like a smile.

“Ah,” Belmor says. “You sorted it out. I suppose that I would have been a little disappointed if you hadn’t.”

“Mostly,” Roy says. “The _how_ and the _what_ I think I follow. The _why_ is still a bit unclear.”

“I can imagine,” Belmor says. He levers himself up to his feet, leaving one hand resting on the rifle. “It would be a touch difficult from your perspective.”

Roy has to steel himself against raising his eyebrows. “What exactly is that supposed to mean?”

“Your problem,” Belmor says, “is that you still believe in this place. You really believe that it’s about more than just who you know, and what they owe you.”

Roy can’t let his guard down. No matter what gets said; no matter what comes of this—he can’t let it rattle him, and he can’t let it rouse the rage enough to blind him. He has to keep his calm, and he has to keep his aim.

“You think this place is more than that,” Belmor says. “More than a charnel house full of old men pushing their own meaningless agendas—or I suppose it’s apter to say that you think it _could_ be. You think that the right people, in the right places, with the right amount of effort, could make it something better.”

Roy swallows, and then he smiles—thinly, but it counts. “I see,” he says. “I hope you’ll enlighten me—what does my naïveté have to do with you orchestrating a terrorist attack on a government building and following it up with attempted murder?”

Belmor grins back. “Everything,” he says. “I did it for you.”

Roy hears his breath leave him, but he’s not sure where it went. “I—what? You—” He has to stay focused—has to stay present; has to stay precise. He’s never going to get another chance. He swallows, drags a breath in, stills his hand by force. “Why would you… why arrange all of—”

“A lot of us want more for this place,” Belmor says, eyes sharp even from across the roof—even in the darkness. “But not all of us are cut out to be the face of it.”

This is a game. This is a game, and if Roy lets the gallop of his own heartbeat deafen him, he’ll lose.

“I’m flattered,” Roy manages. “But I don’t follow.”

“You’re clever, Mustang,” Belmor says. “That’s one of the reasons I picked you. But you have your blind spots—Ishval’s one of them. That’s why it had to happen now. Not that I hadn’t been thinking about it for a long time; the connections that you need to execute an operation like this… well. That’s a life’s work, but _this_ didn’t start until I saw those newspaper reports about your trip out East. A man who bled out there, who was trained to kill them, facing no less than _three_ assassination attempts in their heartland and retaliating not at all? I saw that for what it was—someone who understands that there’s more at play here. Someone who knows what’s more important.”

Roy sets his jaw and clenches his teeth until the strain clears some of the smoke out of his skull. “And what’s that?”

“Change,” Belmor says. “Compassion. You’re capable of both. But some of those imbeciles who’ve parked their asses in those chairs all these years aren’t smart enough to see that the old ways are dying, and good damn riddance. They saw what you did as weakness—thought that you must have been broken all the way through if you didn’t have it in you to fight back after an incident like that. They wanted to see you punish the bad ones whether or not it meant that you had to hurt the good ones, too. So I gave you the chance.”

Roy listens to the air scrape down his throat, then back up, then out of him. “You—set me up. That much is evident, but—”

“You looked soft,” Belmor says. “What’s a better show of strength than defending a whole building full of helpless civil servants? It demonstrated that you wouldn’t stand for violence against Amestrian citizens no matter who it came from—as long as their motives were wrong, you were there, coming to the rescue, waving the flag. And you pulled it off without a hitch.”

Roy feels like he is spinning, in pure dark and total silence—weightless, formless, in a night without stars.

“What about Alana?” he gets out. “Risking your own wife’s safety—”

“Brilliant touch, wasn’t it?” Belmor says, and this smile makes Roy’s stomach start to twist itself inside-out. “Lovan’s intervention was an accident—I never thought she’d get quite that tangled up in the whole thing. If he hadn’t stepped in, I would have had to find another way to get you there. It all worked out beautifully, though, didn’t it? What better way to make it utterly implausible that I could be involved than to put her at risk? That’s the biggest compliment to you, really—not just that I trusted you to sweep in and do the right thing and save the day. Not just that I’d trust you to do it on a bigger scale when it’s your turn to run this place. I trusted you with _her_. I trusted you to carry it out with her at the center of it. Bravo, by the way. Not a scratch on her; not a hair out of place. That’s exactly why it has to be you.”

Something settles into place in one of the crevices left behind. “The—Drachman guns. That was—”

“That was an opportunity I couldn’t pass up,” Belmor says. “They had to come from somewhere, didn’t they?”

“Surely there were other choices,” Roy says.

“I’ve met Olivier,” Belmor says, waving the hand that isn’t still fixed, meaningfully, atop the rifle. “Many times. I’ve sat at the table with her and watched her turn everybody’s blood to ice. I like her. I admire her. She’s unmatched at what she does. But she can’t be the Führer. She can’t be the one in charge. We don’t need ruthless discipline here; we need repentance. We need someone who can stand up and look the victims in the eye and say _I know that I was wrong_. We’ve been barreling forward and crushing all the opposition for decades now, and what the hell has it done for us? We’ve wiped out generations of men—our own, and Aerugo’s, and Drachma’s—and very nearly gouged Ishval off the map. Are we better for it? Are we richer? Are we wiser? It’s time for something different, Mustang. It’s time for men like you.”

“If this is the cost,” Roy says, gesturing outward—towards the gun, towards the courtyard, towards what Belmor was prepared to do in _his_ name— “Then I don’t want it.”

Belmor tilts his head, slowly, and smiles again.

“Too late,” he says. “It was a gift, and you opened it before you knew what it was. You can’t put it back.”

“I’m an alchemist,” Roy says. “We’re _very_ good at putting things back when we’re done with them.”

“That’s your other problem,” Belmor says, letting out a half-breath like a sigh, pushing his coat back, and planting his free hand on his hip. “Nobody’s perfect, I guess.” His eyes harden. “You can’t be both, Mustang—you can’t _do_ both. Can’t have one foot in each world and expect to stand stable. One of these days, you’re going to have to choose.”

“Not today,” Roy says.

Belmor smiles a little wider. “No?”

Roy realizes, perhaps a bit belatedly, that he is an idiot.

He snaps his fingers as Belmor reaches to the back of his belt, for a sidearm that Roy _knew_ he’d carry—it’s the alchemical equivalent of a warning shot, but he has to stop this before it escalates—

This looks more embarrassing than it really is. He got what he needed, but Belmor didn’t even understand that part: for all he knows, Roy was just deeply invested in listening to him monologue about his own damn master plan.

The flame curls around the edge of Belmor’s coat, but the fabric doesn’t catch.

That’s—not standard issue. The dark and Roy’s lessened eyesight tricked him; the cut and the length are the same, but in the brief light of the flame, he can tell that the texture’s different than the wool he wears. The fire itself flickers out uselessly as Belmor draws the pistol that he was reaching for.

“I thought there was a chance that you’d join me,” Belmor says. “Precautions, you know.”

His fingertip rests on the trigger; Roy’s still press to one another.

Roy hates standoffs.

“Perhaps I was—” The word rankles, but Roy spits it out. “—hasty. Perhaps we can… come to some sort of an agreement, General. We’re clearly both rational men—”

Evidently Belmor doesn’t appreciate the irony intended with that statement, at least based on the fact that he interrupts it with a gunshot.

Roy has learned, albeit the hard way, to watch this bastard closer now—when he saw the tendon in Belmor’s forearm start to tighten, he dropped to the concrete like a sack of potatoes.

The bullet goes soaring overhead instead of spearing through his heart. The impact as it buries itself in the cement of the wall behind him covers the sound of his answer: he barely has his elbow under him, but he doesn’t need any leverage to snap his fingers, and this time he aims for the gun.

Scalding hot metal doesn’t suit Belmor very well, but even before the pistol clatters to the cement, he’s indicated an advantage that neither of them will underestimate.

Belmor is willing to kill his opponent.

Roy’s not.

Roy scrambles to his feet again, driving Belmor backwards with a series of short, small bursts of low-heat flame, shepherding him away from the rifle still settled on top of the wall. Belmor stumbles back—one step, then another, and a third—but he’s reaching beneath his coat again, with his left hand this time.

Apparently Records—and the papers—omitted another feature of Belmor’s personal history: he’s ambidextrous.

Just Roy’s fucking luck.

He can’t risk lighting the rest of Belmor’s clothes or causing any serious burns on his skin—this could still come to a trial, and innocent men don’t incinerate their adversaries. Innocent men don’t even lightly toast them. Innocent men are, according to the perception of every military tribunal Roy’s ever heard, extremely crap at self-defense. It’s required. He has to come out of this clean.

He’d also like to come out of it alive, but with Belmor raising a second pistol, he’s not entirely sure that he likes his odds on that front.

A thin, bright, searing curtain of flame encircling General Belmor—at a safe distance from the man’s hair and any other flammable parts of his being—sends him staggering back a few more steps when the tongues of it subside, but the show of force doesn’t daunt him. The gun rises; the barrel levels; he braces his right hand beneath his wrist—

Roy glimpses gold—Ed, of course, dropped into a crouch with one leg extended, palms to the pavement, positioned squarely between Belmor and the doorway to the staircase down. Smoke and cement dust swirl; Ed’s eyes remain utterly intent even as wisps of hair whip across his face—

A narrow column of concrete headed with the unmistakable shape of a clenched fist emerges from the wall at the edge of the roof and slams into Belmor’s hand from below—at the same instant that Belmor pulls the trigger, and the gun muzzle glows, and Roy slides his left foot backwards, trying to twist his torso out of the way to clear the path—

Close.

But not close enough.

It turns out that taking a .45-caliber bullet to the shoulder hurts like _hell_. It’s not that Roy expected any less, of course, but he can only imagine how excruciating this will be when the adrenaline wears down.

Even now, it blooms searing and ravenous, like a flower on fire, like a mushroom cloud—stupidly, Roy clasps his right hand over it, and the blood soaks through his glove in an instant; more stupidly still, he sinks to his knees—

If Ed wasn’t here, that bullet would have landed significantly closer to his heart, and there would be a second one rapidly traveling through his brain.

That’s the thing that Belmor doesn’t understand—it _is_ about more than who you know. It’s about who you care about, and who cares enough in return to stand up for you, and to stand behind you.

Sometimes, they end up standing in between you and a man who’s somehow fit a small arsenal into his belt.

The feverish throbbing of Roy’s shoulder makes it difficult for him to focus his eyes for a long second—too long, surely; he doesn’t have time for—

He finds Ed, running—which is about what he expected, except that Ed’s running _towards_ him, not after Belmor, who just bolted for the stairs.

Roy tries to make his mouth say something helpful, like _Go after him; don’t worry about me_.

What comes out is, “ _Ow_.”

Ed is already seizing onto his uninjured arm to help him to his feet. “How bad is it?”

“Not nearly as bad as it could be,” Roy says. He’s confident that that’s true.

“This is why your one-trick pony shit is _stupid_!” Ed says, but the gentleness of his hands probing at the blood-matted fabric around the wound tells a slightly different story.

“But it’s so semantically fitting,” Roy says. “Pony. Mustang. You know.”

Ed stops moving and stares at him for a long second.

“Sorry,” Roy says. He’s not sure if Ed’s mad about the idiotic thing that he just said or the idiotic thing that he just did, but if past idiocy has taught him anything, it’s that a generalized apology rarely hurts.

Except in politics, of course. In politics, an apology is an admission of guilt, if you even get that far.

“Shut up,” Ed says. “How many times do I—never mind. Are you—”

“Yes,” Roy says. “Let’s go.”

Ed left the fist-shaped chunk of concrete protruding from the wall—now that there’s a moment to consider it without having to duck a bullet this time, Roy notices that Ed dragged Belmor’s rifle right into the midst of it. Slivers of metal gleam through a few gaps in the cement, tangled up and reconfigured. That particular firearm won’t be killing anyone today.

But even counting the gun he dropped when Roy heated it, Belmor must still have at least one more.

“He went for the stairs,” Ed says, which is as similar to the plan as is possible after incorporating the small unanticipated detail of Roy getting himself shot. “Can you—”

“Close enough,” Roy says, gripping Ed’s sleeve with his right hand to steady himself. There isn’t time for the pain just now. He slams the door shut on it in his head, grits his teeth, and starts dragging both of them across the roof towards the entrance to the stairs—the door’s ajar; he can just make out the flickers of the emergency lighting from the stairwell within. This isn’t over yet. Not even close.

Ed’s hand grazes over Roy’s back and collides with the sharp corner of the object attached to the back of his belt. “What—?”

“Later,” Roy says.

Characteristically, Ed doesn’t hesitate: at that, they’re off and running, ungainly from the way they’re gripping onto one another, towards the doorway to the stairs.

Roy can’t see past the door itself, which Belmor left halfway open—he tries to dig his heels in to slow their momentum as they reach the threshold, but Ed keeps pelting onward, and all Roy manages to do is to make their shared balance teeter as they stumble through. He can hear the echo of footsteps, however, from further down—the staircase switches and switches back, geometrically fitted into a square shaft with a gap in the center, so that one can peer over the railing and gaze all the way down. Unless Belmor has figured out how to defy several laws of physics in the last few minutes, his ability to fire directly at them will be enormously impeded by the structure of the place.

Which doesn’t mean, of course, that he can’t fire at other things—such as the lights, all of which are long tubes encased in glass, suspended overhead. As Roy and Ed careen around the first corner, Roy sees the stark flash of several more gunshots below and expects that a shower of shards will follow—or that the ricochet will prove him wrong about the staircase being safe.

It doesn’t matter which awaits: he flings his good arm around Ed’s shoulders and twists them both to put his body in between all of the possibilities and Ed.

The soldier in him can’t quite quell the impulse to shout “ _Down_!” despite the fact that it’s somewhat self-evident at this point.

After a sharp half-breath of anticipation and a few screeches of bullets meeting iron, he realizes that Belmor wasn’t aiming for the lights.

He still has his body wrapped around Ed’s when the pipe above them gives way to the assault at one of the joins. It peels away from the wall, splitting around the impact of the bullets, and the water from within it cascades down over them, streaming on the steps.

“ _Fuck_ ,” Ed says.

Roy’s gloves, both of which have already soaked in a considerable quantity of blood, are now sopping wet and dripping—as is the rest of him.

“Watch your step,” he says, gripping Ed’s arm tighter as he swings them around the next turn. They can’t afford to slow down any more than they _must_ to avoid tumbling headlong down the staircase; Belmor’s already so far ahead—

“ _Damn_ it,” Ed says, “I hate it when they’re too fucking smart—what’s with this guy? Did he get the plans for this place, too? Why does he know _everything_?”

“He’s the head of Records,” Roy says, in answer to both.

“Fuck him,” Ed says, panting only lightly. “And this. When are you gonna be head of Records so that you can know some shit?”

“Ouch,” Roy says.

Roy steps wide as they corner the next quarter of a flight of stairs, peering down and scanning the lower levels to try to pinpoint Belmor’s location—the echoes and the distance muddle the clamor of the footsteps too much for certainty, but he glimpses a shadow cast by the lights on the wall. The next exit door that he and Ed pass on their descent bears a tall painted _6_.

“He’s about two floors ahead,” Roy manages despite the way his voice keeps trying to give out. Now that they’ve come clear of the makeshift waterfall, he claps both palms together—sharply, as a matter of instinct, which makes his shoulder _sing_ with an agony that almost whites out his vision—to evaporate as much of the water from his gloves as he can without scalding his fingers in the steam.

Ed glances at him, significantly, sizing up the bloodstain spreading from his shoulder. “He’s gonna—get away.”

Ed’s hair is drenched and clinging to his face in straggling strands and plastered curls; his jaw is set; he hasn’t slowed a whit since they started running, and at every turn of the stairs, his coat flares out behind him. Portraits of avenging angels fall so, so—fittingly—short.

“He will not,” Roy says.

Ed half-reaches towards him, then grabs onto the banister instead, glancing down— “Can you—can _I_ —”

Ed is capable of more. That’s what he wants to say.

The bright yellow eyes follow the progress of Belmor’s shadow down the steps. “Are you—”

“I’m fine,” Roy says, which is a moderate exaggeration. “Go get him.”

Ed gives him a grin that would set wolves and tigers running for their lives.

Ed clasps both hands around the metal railing of the staircase—too late Roy realizes what that means; too late Roy reaches out, with speech stumbling up his throat—

Ed vaults over the side, soars for a second, lands in a crouch on the middle stair of the next flight down—

“Not like _that_!” Roy says, far, far too late.

Scuffling noises, but with this bleeding hole in his damn shoulder, he can’t convince his unbalanced body to move any faster; his head started spinning after the first flight of stairs; the ravages of the adrenaline must only make his heart beat faster, which makes his wound bleed faster still.

A scream—unmistakably Ed’s—and a stream of light too bright and white and shivering to be alchemy—

Fancy that: Roy _can_ move faster after all.

“Ed!” he calls, and he knows he shouldn’t, but there’s another flight, a turn; he can’t see— “Ed, _please_ —”

No one has ever answered his prayers. He’s been mired in science for a long time, and damned to hell and back again for nearly as long.

But just this once—

Just this _once_ —

It has to count. It has to matter. As he charges down the stairs, heart in his throat, head throbbing, bones shaking, it has to make a _difference_ that he’d give his life and his soul and every last iota of himself for Ed’s preservation. For Ed to be _alive_.

He turns the last corner, unclenching his hand from around the railing, staggering down the last of the stairs—

An electrical box fixed to the wall gapes open, little metal door hanging off its hinges. The tangled wires within spark forlornly.

Ed lies flat on his back on the concrete, mouth open, eyes wide, hair scattered out behind him.

But he’s—

Breathing. He’s breathing. His chest rises, falls; he blinks; he—

“Holy fucking _shit_ ,” he manages. He coughs, weakly, rolls over—

Roy’s at his side, kneeling, regretting that, trying to find an unbloodied part of his hand to use to stroke Ed’s hair back, but what in the hell is wrong with the texture of—

It’s—singed?

“He shoved my right side into that thing,” Ed says, half-gesturing towards the box. “After he shot it, prob’ly. Shorted my goddamn fucking nerves or something. Both ports are jacked. This bastard’s _smart_. I think I hate him.” He slings his left hand across his body, smacking his softer palm against the unmoving metal of his right hand, and then claps it to the ground. Something like a staff materializes; he clings on, and Roy grabs the limp steel arm to help him to lift his weight—

“Ed,” Roy says, searching for some version of his voice that’s more warning than worry. “You’re—”

“ _Come_ on,” Ed grinds out, teeth gritted so tightly that Roy fears for his skull. “This shit’s not over yet; I’m gonna fucking _murder_ him, ’cause that’ll be the last thing I get a chance to do before Winry murders _me_ —”

Roy helps Ed wrangle his way up to his feet—his foot, that is—and then Roy slides his workable arm under Ed’s to support him. Ed’s eyes stay sharp and keep blazing even as his whole face tightens with the pain of it; he grinds his teeth and leans on Roy, and there isn’t time to ask him if he’s sure about this before he’s setting them off towards the door.

“Your gloves dry?” Ed asks.

“Dry enough,” Roy says. “But—”

“Area around here’s not too dense,” Ed says. “He can’t get too far without us seeing where he went, and he’s not that far ahead. I decked him pretty good before he backed me up into the wiring, too, so his head’ll be spinning a little bit, so you can probably just get his clothes smoldering to scare him out of running, and—”

They squeeze out through the back door without having to separate, which brings them to the top of half a flight of concrete steps with a view of a small urban courtyard between buildings.

Belmor, to the credit of his tenacity at the very least, has taken off towards the street, albeit slower than before.

Ed breathes twice, watching wide-eyed, and then glares up at Roy. “What—Mustang! C’mon! He’s gonna get aw—”

“Wait,” Roy says.

Ed bares his teeth. “For wh—”

The crack of the bullet that splits the air makes both of them startle, and Belmor’s howling cry makes Ed cringe. Blood splatters on the pavement just behind him, but it doesn’t have time to pool before Belmor sinks to the concrete right beside to it, clutching at his shattered kneecap with both hands.

“Holy shit,” Ed breathes. Then he pauses, clears his throat, and adds, “I should’ve figured.”

“Well,” Roy says. “You didn’t have to. _He_ should have.”

They take the stairs slowly, since Ed’s leg situation—that is, having the automail dangling rather than absent altogether—is somewhat unprecedented; and since time is no longer of the essence. Belmor won’t be going anywhere anytime soon.

By the time they’ve made it halfway down the steps, Havoc, Breda, and Falman have emerged from their hiding place in the nearest alleyway, the better to approach the softly-wailing, curled-up figure of General Belmor with their guns drawn.

Ed’s leg wobbles, and Roy’s shoulder twinges hard enough to make him clench his teeth, and they both notice one another’s distress in an uncanny sort of unison. Worse still is the way that they come to an agreement without a word, in a matter of three seconds of eye contact followed by a faint arch to Ed’s eyebrows, and then sit down together on the next step.

“We’d better make the most of this,” Ed says.

Roy takes that as an invitation to wrap his more amenable arm around Ed’s shoulders. “Don’t have to tell me twice,” he says.

“You were supposed to ask why,” Ed says. “So then I could tell you that Winry’s gonna tan my hide and nail it to the barn door as a warning to the others.”

“I’ll protect you,” Roy says.

“You and what army?” Ed asks.

Roy looks at him.

Ed grins, wearily. “S’a joke.”

“Mine wasn’t,” Roy says. “I’ll call her. At the very least, I can take the brunt of it. It _is_ my fault.”

“It’s his fault,” Ed says, jerking his chin in Belmor’s direction. Roy’s valiant team has now successfully handcuffed him, and had a minimum of curses spat at them in return, most likely just because Belmor’s in too much pain to articulate much of any vitriol. “Can’t exactly have _him_ call Win.”

“Mm,” Roy says. “I’m not sure that would prove especially productive. Isn’t there some sort of an automail amnesty clause where averting major political disasters is concerned?”

“Like hell,” Ed says. “Have you _met_ Winry? Her thing is that I should just be more careful in the first place, ’cause then I could solve the same problems without shredding her precious masterpiece.”

Roy considers his options and decides that life is short, like many of the best things in it. “There… might be something ever so slightly valid in that.” He feels the simmering betrayal of Ed’s glare well before he turns his head enough to see it. “Don’t give me that—I’m not condoning her methods; I just… your recklessness has scared me since you were twelve. I used to lose a lot of sleep over the prospect that one of these days, your luck might just run out. It wouldn’t be… imprudent… to… consider…”

Ed blinks at him, slowly and deliberately, mouth in a flat line, like an angry cat.

Roy loses track of the rest of that sentence and tries very hard not to wilt.

Ed eyes him for a few more seconds before offering something like mercy: “Are you done?”

“Yes,” Roy says.

“Good,” Ed says.

Riza emerges through the front door of the building opposite with her rifle slung over her shoulder. She starts to raise a hand to wave and then goes very still, staring at Roy’s shoulder. He can actually see the resignation settling in, which is fascinating to say the least.

“Damn,” Roy says. “If only he’d shot me on the other side. Perhaps I could have begged off of some paperwork if it was my dominant arm.”

“There’s still time,” Ed says. “I bet he’d be happy to put another slug in you if you asked real nicely.”

Roy adjusts his arm around Ed’s shoulders and squeezes gently. “Speaking of which—what are you planning to do?”

“‘Planning’?” Ed says. “I’m planning to get a shower and some sleep and figure the rest of this shit out later.”

Riza crosses to Belmor, looks down at him with _radiating_ disappointment, and then says something to Havoc, who snaps a salute and then proceeds over towards Roy and Ed where they remain perched on the stairs.

“She wants to know if you’re okay,” Havoc says as he approaches, “but she thinks that she might hit you if she gets close. She didn’t exactly say that last part, but it was…” He raises a hand to the back of his head and ruffles at his hair. “…strongly implied.”

Roy extracts his arm from around Ed and holds his hand out for Havoc’s cigarette. The social contract compels his subordinate to hand it to him unthinkingly, and Roy takes a long drag before he offers it back.

“Hey!” Havoc says, but the social contract has also forced him to accept the cigarette now tainted with Roy’s saliva. “Aw, c’mon, Chief—I mean, I like you and all, but now it’s like we made out.”

“Good thing, too,” Ed says calmly. “’Cause he sure as hell isn’t getting any from me now that he’s got tar in his mouth.”

“You’re adorable,” Roy says, wrapping the arm around him again. “And your plan for the evening is going to have to wait until after we go to the hospital and make sure the rest of your nervous system isn’t affected overmuch.”

“No,” Ed says.

“Yes,” Roy says.

“Why are you guys soaking wet?” Havoc asks.

“Occupational hazard,” Roy says, at the same instant Ed says, “Localized typhoon.”

Havoc stares at them both for a long second, then at his poisoned cigarette, and then makes a face.

“You two deserve each other,” he says.

Roy gets the feeling that it won’t be the last time he hears that.

Stranger still, he gets the feeling that he isn’t going to mind.

  


* * *

  


Convincing the hospital staff to release him from the clucking nurses long enough for a phone call is no small feat, but Roy Mustang has bested greater challenges of persuasion. A bit of well-timed lamenting about how the imminent painkillers, which will surely follow the removal of the bullet lodged in his cartilage, may leave him tragically incapable of communication doesn’t hurt. He hopes for his own sake that he’s wrong about that one, as it happens.

But this is important. This is important enough to dodge a few doctors in the halls, just in case, as Roy makes his way to the telephones. He has a promise to uphold.

The ling rings twice, and then it clicks. “Hello?”

“Good evening, Miss Rockbell,” Roy says.

There’s a silence, but he can hear her suck in a breath.

“What,” she says in a voice like a glacier in the dead of night, “did he _do_?”

Roy pauses. “Ah… what… makes you think—”

“It wouldn’t be you calling unless he’d fucked up pretty bad,” she says. “But if something _really_ terrible had happened to him, you’d be a mess, and you would have called Al first, and he’d have called me. So I’m gonna ask one more time.” She lets it settle. The woman knows her way around a threat. “ _What_ did he _do_?”

“It was entirely my fault,” Roy says.

“That’s not an answer,” she says.

“I’m aware,” Roy says. “I’m… contextualizing.”

“You’re procrastinating,” Winry says. “Y’know, I always tried not to believe the crap he talked about you, but as it turns _out_ —”

“He helped to stop an assassination attempt that rapidly turned into an attempt to assassinate me instead,” Roy says. “There was… an electrical panel involved.”

Silence.

Then—

“No,” Winry says. “ _No_.”

“Like I said,” Roy says, “all of it was my—”

“ _Electricity_?” Winry says. “He has a bingo board. Doesn’t he? All this time, he was out there _trying_ to find every single possible different way to wreck it so that he could cross off a whole line—he’s probably got two by now. Is he trying to do that thing where you fill in every single square to get a blackout?”

“I can’t comment on prior incidents,” Roy says, “but this particular experience was not… enjoyable.”

“How bad is it?” she asks.

“To my admittedly untrained eye,” Roy says, “rather bad. They’ve… stopped responding. He said something about it overloading the connections and shorting all of the wires.”

The sound that emerges from the telephone is so deeply pained that Roy instinctively lowers the receiver and stares at it.

“Did he at _least_ appreciate the fact that he short-joked himself?” Winry asks distantly, so Roy raises the phone to his ear again. “Please tell me that somebody pointed it out. Any consolation.”

“Ah,” Roy says. “I’ll… pass the sentiment along.”

There is an excruciatingly fraught pause.

“Holy shit,” Winry says. “You’re sleeping with him.”

“I—what?” Roy manages. “What in the world would make you think—”

“General Mustang,” Winry says, “I have known Ed for twenty years.”

Roy considers. On the one hand, this line isn’t especially secure. On the other—

“I suppose that saves one of us the trouble of telling you,” he says.

“Telling me is nothing,” Winry says. “Have you talked to Al?”

“Oh,” Roy says.

“Yeah,” Winry says. “Nice knowing you.”

“Thank you,” Roy says, helplessly. 

“Sure,” Winry says, and she sounds remarkably like Ed in that single moment—and perhaps, Roy thinks, that’s precisely why it wouldn’t quite have worked. “I’ll… jeez. I’ll see how many appointments I can bounce around to get the prep work done. I can definitely head up your way this weekend. Tell him he’s dead meat.”

“I’ll pass that sentiment along as well,” Roy says.

“ _Politicians_ ,” she says, and that sounds a bit like Ed, too. “Good luck.”

“Thank you,” Roy says. “Travel safe.”

  


* * *

  


Having a bullet pried out of one’s shoulder with forceps and other less-than-gentle sorts of tools is an experience that Roy will not be eager to repeat. As the delightful cocktail of drugs that they give him in recompense starts to bubble through his brain, he can’t help wondering if they’re being any gentler with Belmor.

At the moment, though—and perhaps for every moment from here on out—he’s also wondering about something significantly more important, and the important question is easier to answer by way of a devious escape from his room. He stages one in the first instant that they leave him unattended.

They had to haul him away from this doorway not too long ago, but he peeks through it just in case the occupant of this room might have started sleeping off the assorted traumas of the evening in his absence.

Evidently not.

“Hey,” Ed says. The wan smile telegraphs a combination of exhaustion and mild amusement, but Roy has been playing this game much longer than Ed has—Roy notices the way that Ed’s remaining hand curls into the faded teal sheet and slowly draws it up his chest, and his torso subtly shifts to shield the exposed automail port from Roy’s view as much as possible. “You’re an invalid. You’re not supposed to leave your room.”

“Hmm,” Roy says. “Ask me if I give a shit.”

A familiar malfeasant smirk makes a characteristically criminal reappearance. “Okay. D’you give a shit?”

“I do not,” Roy says. He begins to approach the bed, and then he waits.

“Half a shit?” Ed asks.

“Not even a quarter,” Roy says. “I flirted with the idea of a sixteenth and then thought better of it.”

“Boy,” Ed says. “They must be giving you the good painkillers. Guess there are a couple perks to the whole king-of-the-kennel thing.”

Roy is not concerned about the empty space in the bed below Ed’s left thigh. Roy is not concerned about the gap next to Ed’s shoulder, where Roy’s animal brain thinks an arm should be; Roy is not concerned about the protective tilt of Ed’s body as he does everything in his power not to put the ports on display.

Nothing is missing—from him, from this.

Roy saunters the rest of the way to the bedside and gestures to the one unoccupied area that matters: the one at Ed’s left side. “May I?”

Ed blinks at him. “The nurses are gonna hunt you down and hurt you.”

“That would be rather counterproductive,” Roy says.

“Still,” Ed says.

“Let them try,” Roy says.

He keeps waiting.

Ed bites down on his bottom lip, and his eyes rake up and down Roy’s face for a long moment, like he’s expecting to find something different than what’s there. Like he’s waiting for a retraction—or for revulsion.

Roy softens his voice and his smile. “Please?”

Ed swallows, and then—tentatively, for the moment—he smiles back. “Need to dose you up on this stuff more often. Makes you so polite.” He lets out a breath and makes a vague gesture with the remaining arm. “Make yourself at home or whatever, I guess.”

That’s the truly strange thing about it: despite the ambient bustle and the coarse sheets and the awful mattress and the dragging exhaustion, there is absolutely something about climbing into a bed and curling up with Ed that feels like coming home.

Ed, unsurprisingly, knows exactly how and where to shift his body to make room, and it would take a stronger will that Roy’s to resist settling right into the space. He slides his right arm into the tiny gap between the small of Ed’s back and the pillows propped up behind it, which has a threefold goal—one, to claim the incomparable privilege of wrapping an arm around Ed; two, to seize the similar and equally indescribable chance to lay the reaching hand on Ed’s hipbone; and three, to put Roy in the perfect position to lay his head on Ed’s left shoulder as he nestles in close.

Ed releases a long, slow breath, but then he draws in a new one, which he uses to murmur: “Aren’t you worried about somebody seeing this?”

“I’m relying on the sacred tenet of doctor-patient confidentiality,” Roy says, which sounds much more definitive than _No power on our planet or any other could make me move from a place this comfortable_.

“Good luck with that,” Ed says.

“Thank you,” Roy says. “Besides, I’m clearly so high on painkillers that I don’t have the slightest idea who or where I am or what I’m doing, and I can’t possibly be held accountable for my actions at this point.”

“Clearly,” Ed says. “People who are jacked up on opioids always string together complicated sentences like that.”

“I don’t know what what you’re implying,” Roy says, closing his eyes. “I’m tripping far too hard to follow.”

Ed snickers.

Then—tentatively, for the first moment, and progressively more sure-handedly after that—he starts stroking at Roy’s hair.

“Guess I’m stuck with you, then,” Ed says. “Wouldn’t be safe for you to get up.”

“Shame,” Roy says, wriggling in a little closer still. He learned this trick with Hughes—settling an ear just below the collarbone puts one in a prime but relatively subtle position for listening to someone else’s heartbeat.

Mercifully, Ed gives him almost two minutes uninterrupted before remarking, “You’re kinda heavy.”

“We’re having a moment,” Roy says. “Deal with it.”

Ed pats his head. Roy’s not sure whether that’s supposed to be condescending or apologetic, and he doesn’t particularly care.

“You okay?” Ed asks next, and it sounds utterly sincere, and Roy’s heart crumples and then catches fire. “Got a lot of guns pointed at your face today. Which—I mean, on top of being kind of a… thing… for you, is stupid, ’cause you’ve got a really nice face, and like hell am I gonna let anybody put bullets in it.”

“Thank you,” Roy says. “I moisturize.”

“You what?” Ed asks.

“Someday soon,” Roy says, “we’re going to have a very educational weekend.” He draws a slower, deeper breath. “And—yes. I am. Okay, I mean.” He pauses. This is Ed. This is _Ed_ , and he can be unremittingly honest without fear of repercussions. That’s remarkably freeing all on its own. “I think. So far.”

“All right,” Ed says. “Just… you don’t have to be. Don’t forget that.”

Roy shifts to kiss the nearest available part of Ed that won’t require moving too much. It turns out to be Ed’s neck just beneath his ear, which works out quite nicely.

“Thank you,” Roy says, “for that, too.”

They lie still for long enough that the haze of the drugs and the soft rhythm of Ed’s breathing lulls Roy right to the edge of sleep.

“Hey,” Ed says, so quietly that it barely jostles Roy back into something more like wakefulness. “If you try to go in to work tomorrow after getting shot, I’m gonna kick your ass.”

Roy attempts to open his eyes, finds it indescribably arduous, and gives up. “How? You only have one foot.”

The pause lasts long enough that he makes a second effort at getting his eyes open, and this one is more successful.

Ed looks utterly, entirely, irredeemably betrayed.

“I _hate_ you,” he says. He squirms in a way that may be intended to dislodge Roy’s embrace, but Roy has a weight advantage on top of the additional operable limbs. Momentarily, Ed realizes his tactical mistake and starts poking mercilessly at Roy’s ribs instead. “I save your stupid ass and get the crap beat out of me for it, and _this_ is my damn reward—”

“I called Winry,” Roy says. “She’ll be coming in this weekend.”

Ed goes still for a second, and then his hand settles much less proddingly on Roy’s back again. “You didn’t have to do that.”

“It’s like you said,” Roy says. “You saved my stupid ass and got the crap beat out of you. It was the _least_ that I could do.”

Ed goes still for another second.

“She’s punishing me,” he says. “Making me wait that long, I mean. She could at least send me a loaner leg in the mail or something.”

“You’re not the only person in the _entire_ military with automail,” Roy says. “I’ll see what I can arrange.” He settles in close against Ed’s neck again. The beautiful silken hair smells the tiniest bit burnt, but it somehow still feels soft. “I have to go in tomorrow.”

“Bullshit,” Ed says. “Why?”

So much for sleeping. Roy sits up and maneuvers himself into a better position for carding his fingers through Ed’s hair.

“There’s an appointment that I can’t miss,” he says.

  


* * *

  


The next morning… hurts.

Roy is not ashamed to say he whines aloud when he realizes that it’s time to start preparing for the avalanche of a day that lies ahead.

He manages to shower in his hospital room, which is wretched but expedient; and then to sit very still while a nurse changes out the dressing and the bandages currently standing between him and a nasty infection; and then to dress, mostly unaided, in the clean uniform that Riza brought him, although he leaves the jacket hanging from his shoulders instead of fastening it over his sling. That almost garners a sigh from her, so he knows that he’s on the right track. By the grace of some unmerited miracle, they have topped the stairs to Central Command by half past eight.

Roy was even able to steal two minutes to slip into Ed’s room, sweep his hair back, kiss his forehead, and bid him a pleasant morning, which was greeted with some venom—a reasonable amount, Roy thinks, under the circumstances.

Last night was less than exemplary: Roy scrounged up about two hours of fitful sleep while curled up with Ed, followed by a grand total of about five minutes more after the nurses forcibly evicted him back to his own room. The experience has left him bleary enough that nothing seems to be getting to him. He supposes that that’s one of those backwards sorts of blessings.

Fuery, looking tired but triumphant, holds two things out to Roy when he and Riza step into the office: a cup of coffee, and a rather sizable wheel of gleaming brown tape.

“I made three extra copies,” Fuery says. “In addition to the two that you need, I mean. It… took a while. Er—good morning, sir.”

“It’s good now,” Roy says.

The doctors told him not to use his left hand except in instances of dire necessity, but he’s fairly certain that, in this case, holding coffee counts.

“I don’t suppose that the microphone survived?” Fuery says. “There was… a lot of static when you were on the stairs.”

Roy turns to Riza, who is carrying his assorted accoutrements in a canvas tote bag and will never, in his life, let him forget this. For the moment, he doesn’t especially mind.

“A few pieces made it,” Riza says. “But there was an encounter with a water main.”

Fuery wrinkles his nose. “I… see.” He brightens again. Perhaps this particular coffee has magical properties. “Oh, well. Now that we have a proof of concept, we can always make another one.”

“I’m getting you a raise,” Roy says. He sips the coffee, blinks, and sips it again. In addition to being potentially magical, it’s excellent. “A _big_ raise. Where is this from?”

“It’s a secret,” Fuery says. “Like the bit at the beginning that I cut out of the tapes, I’m guessing.”

Roy stares at him.

“I am getting you,” Roy says, “the biggest raise of your _life_.”

Fuery smiles. “Thank you, sir.”

“Thank _you_ ,” Roy says. “Go home and get some sleep.”

With a telling swiftness, Fuery gathers up a small assortment of miscellanea from the tables and makes a beeline for the door. “My pleasure, sir. Good luck today.”

“No such thing,” Roy says.

Fuery smiles at him, says, “Then it won’t hurt to wish it,” and shoulders his way out through the door.

Roy gazes after him for a moment before turning to Riza again.

“Were you all always this insubordinate?” he asks.

“Of course not,” she says. “You brought it on yourself, sir.”

“Thank you,” he says. “I can always count on you to sugarcoat my shortcomings.”

She manages to suppress ninety percent of the smirk, but he knows her far too well to miss the other ten. “Glad to be of service, sir.”

He figures that he’s entitled to take what he can get on the amusement front. She’ll be waiting in the office for the other layabouts who helped him thwart a murder last night, and he’ll be heading down towards the first of today’s cruelties on his own.

  


* * *

  


In the interrogation room, Alana Belmor weeps in total silence, with both hands pressed to her mouth and both eyes fixed on the speaker as the recording plays. The tears run down her face and then over her fingers, and they drip to the table unheeded.

Roy is glad that he’s on the other side of the glass. He’s glad that he’s not in the room with her. He’s glad that he doesn’t have to ask her, for the record, questions that he already knows the answers to.

Belmor fooled all of them, but she has the most, by far, to lose.

Roy knows that she’ll make it through—he knows that she’s strong enough. Belmor knew it, too. If he hadn’t—if she wasn’t—Belmor might not have risked it. He loved her enough that he might have spared her all of this if he hadn’t known, past a shadow of a doubt, that if it came down to it, she could weather the storm.

She will.

But it sure as hell won’t be easy.

The door behind Roy opens very quietly, and he already knows who it is.

“Sir,” Riza says. “The ten o’clock meeting…”

“Of course,” he says. Turning away from the window proves even harder than he thought it would be, but at the same time it’s a tremblingly profound relief.

As Roy follows Riza out into the hall, she nods to the sling immobilizing his arm. “How is it?”

“I’ve had worse,” Roy says. “I’ll be fine.”

“That wasn’t the question,” she says.

“But it’s the answer that matters,” Roy says.

“It’s not,” Riza says. “You insist on thinking that, but you’re the only one.”

They reach the guarded hall, which mercifully spells the end of this conversation, but she doesn’t let him go without a very significant look.

Roy can’t afford to dwell on that right now: he’s still swimming in the remnants of a half-dozen different emotions, and he needs to focus more intently than ever on the game of chess about to begin. It’s a terrible pity that this morning’s healthy portion of painkillers seems to have mostly worked its way out of his system; the throbbing intensifies immensely as he squares his shoulders, nods to the guardsmen, and turns the handle of the door.

Führer Grumman has his elbow on his desk blotter, his chin on his hand, and a shit-eating grin on his face.

Roy is not surprised.

“Sit down, sit down,” Grumman says when Roy moves to salute. “Neither of us has time for that nonsense these days.”

Roy settles in the plush armchair opposite the desk, but he doesn’t get comfortable. “Thank you, sir.”

“No time for that, either,” Grumman says. He sighs, tapping the fingers of his free hand on the desk blotter, but the smile doesn’t fade. “What am I going to do with you, Roy?”

“I take it that you listened to the tape,” Roy says.

“Recording a citizen _or_ another officer without their consent is illegal, you know,” Grumman says mildly.

Roy draws a breath.

“Respectfully, sir,” he says, “no, it’s not.”

The smile disappears for the first time in this conversation, and Grumman’s eyebrows rise.

“During the Bradley regime,” Roy says, “it was written into law that surreptitious recording and/or photography is permitted if it’s done demonstrably in the interests of protecting the safety of the state from acts of suspected treason. The definitions of both ‘suspected’ and ‘treason’ are left somewhat… open-ended.”

Grumman looks at him.

Roy looks back.

Neither of them needs to comment on Roy’s remarkably extensive knowledge of the legal particulars pertaining to treason against the state.

Grumman sits back in his chair, arching just one eyebrow this time. “He was right, you know. Olivier would have cut him down where he stood—not that I blame her, of course, but the fact remains that you did it with a minimum of bloodshed, in a way that will hold up in court. And I think he’s right about why. I think you learned the hardest way there is that killing is what got us here, and keeping at it sure as hell isn’t going to take us somewhere else.”

Roy takes another breath, deeper this time. “Nothing that ever comes of Ishval will make up for what we did there.”

“Of course not,” Grumman says. “Life is linear. That’s the bitch of it. Just wait ’til you’re _my_ age.”

Roy blinks.

“It’s a brave thing, in its way,” Grumman says, faux-idly, “to bring down someone that you don’t dislike.”

“I didn’t have a choice,” Roy says.

“Of course you did,” Grumman says. “Just because you never would have taken it doesn’t mean that it wasn’t there.”

He twirls the end of his mustache around a fingertip. Before him, Roy had never dreamed of meeting anyone who actually _did_ that.

Deep breath number three comes and goes, and Roy swallows for good measure before he speaks.

“Am I dismissed, sir?” he asks.

“I sure hope so,” Grumman says, grinning at him. “I’m all out of cryptic platitudes for today. Take it easy on the arm, would you?”

“Yes, sir,” Roy says, getting up from the chair. “Thank you, sir.”


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow. Okay! Closing out another one. I do want to apologize again for the inconsistent updates; 2020 has been… like that. :'|
> 
> I want to reiterate the huge, huge hug and thank-you to Jujubee2522 for kicking this off with the idea and cheerleading it the whole way. ♥ None of this ever would have happened without her support!
> 
> I also want to give a particularly big and sincere thank-you to everyone who has made it this far. ♥ As most of you likely noticed – and several of you pointed out in very generous comments ♥ – I actually took some chances and pushed myself a bit when I was writing this fic, instead of just hanging out in my comfort zone like I so often do. XD It means so much to hear that a lot of you enjoyed that, and to know that you invested in it! Pretty much every time I posted a chapter, I would do a first edit and _hate_ it, and then sit on it for a while, and then do a second edit and hate it a lot less, so the comments and kindness and kudos from all of you were especially critical this time around. 
> 
> tl;dr I hope you all know how much and how deeply I appreciate every minute that you spend reading, and everyone who is able to leave a comment. ♥ Fanwork thrives on interaction, and I am so, so lucky to have such wonderful readers who will join me on excursions like this one. Thank you so much for being here! ♥

The next few days slide by so quickly that they blur. Roy testifies, and testifies again; the bullet extracted from his shoulder is forensically identical to the ones pulled from Belmor’s last few targets at the firing range. His shoulder aches, and burns, and stings every time that the shower water touches it.

It stings less every time that Ed touches it. Ed is getting very good at wrapping bandages with one hand.

In typically indomitable style, Ed stomps through the week on a temporary prosthetic requisitioned from the medics at headquarters, making his way undaunted through his work without the aid of a right arm. Roy empathizes much more acutely than usual—and also spends a considerable portion of the week with his heart in his throat, choking on terror at the prospect of what might happen if the brats-turned-thugs who have it out for Ed were to try to corner him now.

Perhaps his posturing on Monday got the point across. Perhaps Ross is keeping an extra sharp eye out for her most volatile direct report. Perhaps… perhaps those boys are just grown enough to realize that not every battle is worth winning, and sometimes you’re not on the side that you thought you were.

One way or another, they slide through to Friday more or less unscathed—or at least no more scathed than they were when they started.

Friday is when Winry Rockbell arrives.

Ed, in all of his undiminished glory, turns up in Roy’s office a few minutes past five. He manages to close the door very quietly despite the lack of a secondary door-closing appendage, which just goes to show that anyone who slams it, as a matter of rudeness or carelessness or simple ignorance, and tries to defend themselves really doesn’t have a leg to st…

Well.

“Hey,” Ed says. “You ready?”

Roy gathers up a few more files and slots them all into his briefcase. “Ready? Most likely not. Bracing myself to do it anyway? Certainly.”

Ed smirks a little, but Roy gets the sense that he has his own trepidations about what lies ahead. “You campaigning for king of the Smartass Club?”

“Depends,” Roy says, switching out the lights and crossing the room to join him. “Will you swear fealty to my wit?”

“Fuck no,” Ed says.

“I didn’t think so,” Roy says. “Shall we?”

The northbound train is right on time. By some uncharacteristic stroke of luck, so are they.

Roy doesn’t need his glasses to spot the bright blonde ponytail—and it helps, so to speak, that Ed tenses beside him, which gives him something of an advanced warning system in addition to the fact that Winry is wearing a pale pink coat.

“Hey, nerd!” she calls across the crowd, which also helps.

Ed, still ever-so-slightly noticeably cautious on his interim leg, starts towards her. “Hey, nerd, yourself; c’mere, you _jerk_ —”

They meet without an instant’s hesitation, and despite having only the single arm to work with, Ed holds her _tight_. Winry drops her bags to the platform—even over the hubbub, Roy can hear the _clunk_ of their weight hitting the pavement, and the tinkle of some of the contents against one another—and hugs him right back.

“So,” she says, brightly, patting his back once as she finally releases him. “Did you tell Al yet?”

Ed wrinkles his nose. “That I busted your precious masterpiece again? There wasn’t enough blood to call him over it, but I figure I’ll mention it in passing next time I talk to him so that he can give me some crap, and—”

“Not about that,” Winry says. “About how you’re fucking Roy.”

Ed stares at her.

Then he stares at Roy.

“It’s not really his fault,” Winry says. “He took your side on the phone, so I put two and two together.”

“I’m… sorry,” Roy attempts.

Ed makes a face that combines significant amounts of both agony and confusion. “That you took my side?”

“That it backfired,” Roy says.

“I mean,” Ed says, “it’s _you_. It has to fire one way or another.”

“Gross,” Winry says. She waits not a single second longer before she gathers up her bags. “Come on, already—I’ve got a consultation on Monday that I can’t miss. Let’s get this show on the road.”

“Can we get the show on my arm?” Ed asks.

“Leg first,” Winry says, latching onto Ed’s left side and towing him off towards the exit gate. “It’s killing me to watch you limping. What did they _give_ you? Can we burn that thing?”

“I’m afraid that it’s government property,” Roy says, “or I would be absolutely on board.”

He can’t let her—can’t let this situation—intimidate him.

The man that he was a year ago, six months ago, any instant from the time before, would laugh him out of the country at the thought. Winry Rockbell is a gentle, giving teenaged girl. Yes, she’s extremely intelligent, occasionally blunt to the point of abrasion, and has been known to throw metal objects around, but all of the same things could be said of Ed. The two of them are cut from the same cloth, and have been subjected to similar varieties of pain.

It’s just that Ed _understands_ —Ed understands Roy better than anyone Roy’s ever met, except for Riza. Hughes came close, but then he discovered happiness, and that’s a separate story.

Ed… Ed knows the guilt, and the accountability, and how excruciatingly narrow the difference is some days between going on and giving up. Ed has seen the deepest reaches of Roy’s weakness, examined them, and consciously decided not to push him aside.

Roy’s not sure how many of his particular vulnerabilities Winry can be trusted with—that’s what’s unsettling him. He’s not sure how much of himself he can be without being found pathetic.

He misses the days when he used to revel in other people’s underestimation, when there was a special sort of smugness that came from knowing that they were wrong. Judgment rankles now. So many of the things that people whisper might be true.

Neither of Roy’s current charges seem to have noticed his discomfiture, at least: Winry’s dragging Ed off towards the street, and he’s valiantly attempting to keep up on the borrowed leg. Roy stays a few steps behind to give them a chance to snipe at each other; presumably Ed remembers where they parked the car, and—

Except that then Ed looks back—craning his neck over his shoulder, and for a moment there’s a flicker of consternation in his eyes before they light on Roy, and then they warm. He raises his eyebrows and offers a faint, questioning sort of smile, and that…

Is enough to make Roy lengthen his stride until he catches up.

“What’s wrong?” he asks as he does.

“Nothing,” Ed says. “But it’s bad form to ditch your chauffeur.”

“Gauche in the extreme,” Roy says.

“Can you even drive with just the one arm?” Winry asks Roy, nodding to the sling.

“He couldn’t drive before,” Ed says. “I haven’t noticed any difference.”

“It’s also bad form to insult your chauffeur in front of a client,” Roy says. “Especially when neither of you has a choice—unless you’d prefer to walk.”

“Oh, man,” Ed says. “I can’t believe I haven’t been taking advantage of the ‘shot’ jokes. I mean—it’s worth a shot. It’s a shot in the dark. Your driving skills are shot. C’mon, Win, help me out here.”

“I can’t believe that I acknowledge you in public,” Winry says. “The last thing I’m gonna do is contribute to the Elric Book of Bad Puns and go down in history as a crappy joke conspirator.”

“Very sensible of you,” Roy says innocently. “Don’t let him call the shots.”

Winry stares at him, and then at Ed, and then at the road ahead of them.

“I quit,” she says.

“You can’t quit on me,” Ed says. “Everybody else does such shotty work.”

“I quit _forever_ ,” Winry says.

Roy rolls two of his favorite words around in his mouth for a half-second before he voices them: “I’m sorry.”

Ed snickers. “I’m not.”

“At least I understand now why people keep shooting at you,” Winry says.

“That’s fair,” Roy says. He supposes that they should all count themselves fortunate that they’ve made it to the car without any casualties: he unlocks it and opens the back door for his chauffeur-ees.

“Thank you,” Winry says, sliding onto the seat. “How come you don’t hold doors for me, Ed?”

“How come _you_ don’t doors for _me_?” Ed asks, climbing in somewhat more carefully to join her. “You’re buff as hell, and I’m missing two limbs.”

“More like one and a half,” Winry says.

“Roy,” Ed says—in a voice so borderline coy that Roy’s hand stills without his permission even as he starts to move to close the door. “You have my permission to drive off of a cliff and kill us all.”

“Veto,” Winry says.

“Co-vetoed,” Roy says. He closes the door and gets into the driver’s seat. “Who would feed the cats?”

“Damn it,” Ed says. “I hate it so much when you’re right.”

“For what it’s worth,” Roy says, firing up the engine, “me, too.”

  


* * *

  


The moment that Roy has parked in front of Ed’s apartment building, and Ed and Winry have climbed out of the car, there is a part of him that wants to press the gas pedal to the floor and peel off homeward in a shriek of tires and a plume of smoke.

It’s a small part—which is fitting, in its way. And it’s an unpersuasive one.

It is curious indeed to recognize that even at the cost of dignity—even at the cost of _safety_ ; even at the cost of comfort and retreat—he wants more time with Ed. Even on unsteady ground, with an unfamiliar player, at the end of the week that they’ve had, a few more minutes of Ed’s company sounds preferable to hiding all alone.

Strange.

Terrifying.

Inescapable.

Roy tries to make the whole thing look a bit more natural by insisting on carrying some of Winry’s luggage up to Ed’s apartment with his usable arm. The incredible weight of the bag that she hands to him serves the secondary purpose of proving what Ed said about her musculature to be absolutely true.

When Ed has let them in to the apartment and gently shepherded the cats out of the doorway with his softer foot, Winry wastes only half a breath on a “Thank you!” before taking the suitcase full of anvils back from Roy, plunking it down on the floor, and starting to unpack. Both pieces of Ed’s damaged automail rest calmly on the coffee table, stranded among a scattering of books. They look bereft and bizarre there—like wings torn off of a butterfly and cast aside, gleaming and sharp-edged and lifeless—but that does make the carpet nearby a better place than most for Winry to start setting up shop.

“Hey, Mustang,” Ed says, starting for the kitchen. “Get your hands in here and help me feed the monsters.”

“Only my hands?” Roy asks, sauntering after him—a careful sort of sauntering, given that Maggie keeps trying to twine herself around one or both of his ankles, and the last thing that he wants to do is hurt her. “I’m not sure I can separate them from the rest of me and still convince them to be useful.”

“Har-dee-har,” Ed says.

Roy crosses the kitchen to join him at the counter, where Ed is wrestling one-handed with a little aluminum can of cat food. He grimaces and then skids it across the countertop towards Roy.

“Question for you,” he says, in a voice low enough that Winry would be hard-pressed to overhear. “Do you want to stay over here again tonight?”

Despite having spent significant portions of today wondering if or when Ed was going to ask precisely that question, it still catches Roy off-guard. The brain is a remarkable organ. Roy’s is, currently, a remarkable piece of crap.

He tries to weigh his options quickly, to avoid his hesitation stretching into a pause long enough to qualify as awkward—but Winry is a stronger force than he’d accounted for; the warm cat trying to trip him is bizarrely comforting; he has a can of cat food in his hand; there are so many factors in flux—

“Hang on,” Ed says. “Before you decide—let me finish my thought here. There’s stuff I didn’t mention last time. Like… this is a really good neighborhood. This place is actually harder to find and harder to access than your place, first because nobody knows you’re here; and second because of the way that it’s built, where they’d have to get into the building, and then the hall, and then figure out which apartment you’re in. And there’s a fake name on the mailbox, just so you know. And even if somebody _did_ get that far, Winry’s gonna be up half the night with a lot of really sharp tools and no mercy for anybody who interrupts her. And… I figure that if you try it out for a while, and it’s not going very well, you can always bail and go home later on.”

Roy employs the discouraged hand of his outlawed left arm to hold the can steady, works his right fingernail under the leverage tab, and opens the lid.

Then he looks at Ed.

Maggie meows loudly.

“Can it,” Ed says to her. “Pun completely fucking intended.”

“You shouldn’t talk to your brother’s pets that way,” Roy says.

“ _You_ shouldn’t avoid every question that’s hard to answer without giving something up,” Ed says, eyes on him again in an instant. “‘Should’ doesn’t carry a whole lot of weight with me.”

Roy continues looking at him—at the set jaw, at the arched eyebrow, at the fake-casual lean on the counter and the stubborn turn of his beautiful mouth.

Roy could tell Ed that Ed doesn’t carry a whole lot of weight to begin with, which is fair enough, proportionally speaking.

Roy could tell Ed that it’s not about difficulty; it’s about survival.

Roy could tell Ed no.

Roy could tell Ed a lot of things.

But they have, more than a bit incidentally, proceeded through an extensive educational course in reading one another since this began, and Roy can hear and see the thousand tiny ways that Winry’s presence has set Ed on edge. Roy doesn’t blame him: she’s a force to be reckoned with. The pair of them have both grown a great deal over the past several years, and Roy thinks it highly unlikely that tonight’s Winry would ever deliberately use her position of power to cause Ed any pain, but the fact remains that she’s his ex-girlfriend—ex-romance, ex-something—and a number of offhand references have added up to an impression that Ed doesn’t know anymore quite where he stands. One of the pillars of his entire life has tilted towards an unprecedented uncertainty.

Just this once, it is possible that Ed needs Roy some small fragment as much as Roy needs him.

“I suppose that it wouldn’t hurt to try,” Roy says.

“It might,” Ed says, casually, but the slight shift of his features spells relief. “Depending on the trajectory and velocity of any wayward airborne wrenches. But—y’know. You have an escape route.”

“True,” Roy says. He holds the opened can out to Ed. “Would you like to do the honors?”

“And lose one of the five fingers I have left?” Ed says. “No, thanks.”

Roy opens several more cans, and Ed casts several more glares down at the swarm of fur rotating around the food dishes, and a considerable and somewhat disconcerting array of noises emanate from the living room.

“We should most likely eat, too,” Roy says.

“I _guess_ ,” Ed says. “Do you wanna cook?”

Roy does not imagine that he has to remind either of them that Ed has been living nearly exclusively at Roy’s house for the past few weeks. “Do you have anything that can _be_ cooked?”

Ed looks towards the fridge, then at the floor, then at their feline entourage. “Other than the cats, you mean?”

“I may already be on thin ice with your brother,” Roy says. “I feel that it would be extremely unwise to endorse eating his cats.”

Ed smirks. “What else are they good for?”

“Right,” Roy says. “I’m sure that they’ve never provided you a moment’s joy or comfort in the duration of the time that you’ve had them.”

“They just shed on my clothes and sit on my books,” Ed says, but the grin gives him away. “Bunch of fuzzy parasites.”

Roy looks at him.

Ed blinks back. “What?”

Roy reaches down, slowly, and plucks a hair off of his own uniform jacket. He holds it up to the light so that the gold will gleam, and it will be utterly unmistakable that it’s one of Ed’s.

Ed stares at him. “I don’t _sit_ on your books,” he says. “I just hold them hostage.” He pauses. “You _asshole_.”

“Hmm,” Roy says.

“Shut the hell up,” Ed says. “We haven’t solved the problem. What—”

“I’ll go pick something up,” Roy says. “I can swing by my place on the way over and get my things. Are there any books in particular that you’d like me to bring back for you to take captive?”

Ed takes up staring again, which makes Roy wonder what he said that was wrong—but in the instant before he formulates the question, Ed starts to smile.

It’s not the mischievous smirk or the one that Ed bites back when he’s rolling his eyes. It’s not the reckless grin, or the growing amusement smile that’s usually followed by raised eyebrows and a challenge.

It’s something new and altogether softer—something slightly delicate, and staggeringly sweet.

“I dunno,” Ed says. “Surprise me.”

“I’ll do my best,” Roy says. Sometimes small promises can still be safe. “What would you like to eat?”

“Doesn’t matter,” Ed says. Before Roy can ask about that, either, he turns towards the doorway and calls, “Hey, Win, what do you want for dinner?”

  


* * *

  


There is one feature of the apartment that Ed failed to mention in his survey of its safeguards, and this one is a weak point: the walls are very, very thin.

They are thin enough, as it happens, that Roy can hear the voices in the living room perfectly clearly while he’s standing outside the front door with Ed’s keyring in his hand.

“You’re so damn lucky,” Winry is saying. “If you’d fried any of the connections—”

“Hey,” Ed says. “ _I_ didn’t fry anything. I _was_ fried. Passive voice. If you want to yell at somebody, we can go to the jail at HQ, and you can visit the dipshit who did the frying.”

“Whatever,” Winry says. “The point is that replacing just the wires that shorted is a lot easier than re-rigging the whole system. I might be out of your hair by tomorrow night.”

Ed is quiet for a half-breath too long, and then he says, “Oh.” After another moment, he adds, “Well—I mean—you’ve… probably got a lot of… clients. And stuff. Waiting. So… that’s… probably a good thing. Not getting stuck here for as long.”

There’s a pause.

“…right?” Ed says.

“Y’know,” Winry says, “it wouldn’t kill you to come visit every once in a million years or so.”

Roy can hear a trace of shock in the silence—and more than a trace when Ed breaks it. “You… want me to?”

“Of course I do,” Winry says, sounding moderately offended at the question. “Even if you’re obnoxious, you’re still my best friend.”

“Thanks,” Ed says. “Sort of. Maybe. But—”

“But nothing,” Winry says. “I’m sick and tired of waiting around for other people to do what I want, or be what I want, or come back, or—whatever. I’ve spent half my life waiting. Nothing good has ever come of any of it. So just… be your stupid self. I don’t care. I’d rather have the you that I can get than sit around pretending that there’s some other you who might’ve been more, or might’ve wanted more, or whatever. It was dumb of me to wait for him. And it wasn’t fair—not to you, and not to myself, either. He doesn’t exist.” She draws in a deep breath and lets out a huge sigh. “But that’s _okay_. Fuck him anyway. You and me doesn’t have to be all or nothing. I just want my friend back.”

“You can’t have me _back_ , dummy,” Ed says. “You can’t have something back if it never left.”

“What about a yo-yo?” Winry asks.

It’s Ed’s turn to take offense. “Rotational inertia doesn’t count.”

“Why not?” Winry says.

“Because shut up,” Ed says, “that's why.”

“What about a boomerang?” Winry says.

“This is why I don’t friggin’ visit,” Ed says.

Roy releases a breath, moves six soundless steps backwards in the hallway, and starts jingling the keys as he retreads the half-dozen paces closest to the door.

Dinner—which is cheap Cretan takeout food, because this place is always fast, and the food stays hot long enough to transport—with Winry and Ed at the same table involves a substantial amount of arguing about everything from the most mathematically efficient way to fold a napkin to whether Al is going to bring them souvenirs to something in an area of advanced engineering that completely loses Roy the instant that they drop the chemistry component and dive into the physics. Roy feels that as long as he makes it out of this experience with all of his fingers and most of his eardrums intact, he’ll consider himself lucky.

In the interest of both, he chooses not to comment on the fact that Ed welcomes Maggie up into his lap the instant that she starts kneading at his softer shin. He rubs behind her ears every time that he’s contemplating a riposte to Winry, and he sneaks her no less than six different morsels of his food.

Parasites indeed.

Roy has some files to work through, because of course he does, and also because he lost several valuable minutes of today to complaining about the cafeteria, which was necessary after he and Ed had ventured into it for the first time in recent memory. The food was not even remotely worth suffering the claustrophobic crowds, the noise, the endless seeking eyes, and the extremely uncomfortable seating, but Roy doesn’t believe for an instant that the quality of the cuisine was why Ed insisted that they try it all of a sudden.

Roy weathered it, though, which is the point, he supposes. And then he got to complain about weathering it for the better part of a half-hour, which set him behind, which has landed him with a handful of files on a Friday night. Perhaps there is a modicum of justice in the universe after all.

Ed settles down on the couch beside him with one of the books that Roy brought—close enough that their complementary undamaged shoulders brush together.

Roy can’t tell for certain whether the distance is to assuage any awkwardness with Winry, or simply a matter of habit. Ed’s displays of physical affection have varied wildly so far: Roy’s not sure how much of that can be traced to some sort of a psychological division between the staggeringly mediocre dating experiences that Ed has alluded to; or whether Ed was only ever so pointedly tactile with Alphonse in the hopes of proving that he still considered Al his flesh and blood when his brother was possessed of neither. It’s possible that family and established friends are entitled to the full breadth of contact, but that Ed was taught, one moment of painstaking negative reinforcement at a time, not to touch a lover unless they ask.

It’s a good thing that Roy doesn’t know the identities of the exes responsible for that. A substantial part of him still wants to burn them all.

The only ex that he does know currently sits cross-legged on the floor, toiling away with her supplies spread out on the coffee table, unconcernedly pushing the cats away when they investigate too avidly and insert their noses too close to her work.

Roy waits to make sure that she’s intent on a stubborn screw before he sneaks a proper glasses-on glance over at Ed, who is as mesmerizing as ever when engrossed in a book like this. Roy is faintly embarrassed to realize that he is quantifiably envious of the book in question for holding Ed’s attention. Receiving that fire-eyed focus is a privilege that inanimate objects really can’t appreciate.

“So,” Winry says. “Are you guys always this exciting on a Friday night?”

“Yes,” Roy says.

Ed’s eyes don’t even pause in flicking back and forth across the page. “We went to the opera one time.”

Winry’s head snaps up. “You _what_?”

“Why is everyone always so surprised?” Roy asks. “Ed’s a scientist. It was an untested experience enjoyed by others, which he couldn’t easily understand the appeal of. Obviously the only solution is firsthand data collection to try to identify the discrepancy.”

Winry stares at him.

“Thank you,” Ed says.

“Jeez,” Winry says. “Well—that sort of explains a lot. I always figured part of why you two butted heads so much was because your modes of thinking were really different, but… I think it’s actually because you’re fundamentally alike.”

“That is a higher compliment than I can begin to describe,” Roy says.

Ed is staring at him now. “Holy shit, you’re smooth.” He employs his elbow in a manner that seems to be meant to be discouraging. “Knock it off.”

“Ah,” Roy says. “I’m not allowed to say that I’m sorry.”

“You’re damn right you’re not,” Ed says. He stretches his arm over his head, nearly unbalances the book open on his knee, rescues it, and then frowns at the cat that leaps up onto the unoccupied couch cushion and curls up beside him. The frown redirects itself towards Winry once he realizes that the cat isn’t going to budge. “What’s Friday night supposed to be like? What are you so eager to do, anyway?”

“Anything,” Winry says. “Rush Valley’s nightlife makes Resembool look hip.”

“Oh,” Ed says. “Shit.”

“Yeah,” Winry says.

“Do you like jazz?” Roy asks.

“I like anything that isn’t one single, solitary bar full of the same old greasy gear-heads that you work with every day of your life,” Winry says.

“That,” Roy says, “I am positive we can arrange.”

“Do I have to come?” Ed asks.

At the very least, that gives both Roy and Winry a chance to stare at him, and nothing unites two disparate parties quite like a common source of shocked dismay.

“I don’t like cabarets or wherever you’re planning on taking us,” Ed says. “The smoke always makes me gag. And their drinks are overpriced. And the people are too loud. And I can’t dance.”

“I can teach you,” Roy says.

Ed eyes him. “I’ve got a metal foot.”

Wordlessly, Winry lifts his disembodied leg from the coffee table.

“Good point,” Ed says. “Right now, I don’t have _any_ foot.”

“Well, I’ve got a stone heart, a bad back, and a chip on my shoulder,” Roy says. “Hasn’t slowed me down overmuch.”

Ed elbows him. “Shut _up_. None of that is even close to being true, you asshole.”

“My back is terrible,” Roy says.

“It looks fine to me,” Ed says, and then his expression tightens as he realizes what he just said in front of Winry.

“Eew,” Winry says cheerfully.

“It’s his fault,” Ed says.

“I would apologize,” Roy says, “but I’m still on probation.”

“At least your ears work, like, eighty percent of the time,” Ed says.

Roy considers the increasingly scowlish set of Ed’s expression.

“You don’t have to dance,” Roys says.

“Good,” Ed says. “Then you don’t have to die.”

“Perfect,” Winry says. She taps the grip end of a screwdriver against the grille of Ed’s shin and then gestures ambiguously with it. “I’ll get enough of this done tonight that I can be sure I’ll finish in the morning, and then you can buy me lunch, and then you can buy me a new dress, and then we can give it a real test-drive when we go out.”

“That sounds like a plan,” Roy says.

“Yeah,” Ed says. “A plan designed specifically to cause me to suffer.”

“You busted my baby again,” Winry says, tapping the leg more vigorously. “The least you can do is suffer a little bit.”

Ed stages a dramatic collapse against Roy’s arm. “Fucking save me.”

“I can’t,” Roy says, though he does offer some consolatory shoulder-patting. “And I can’t say ‘sorry’ either.”

“ _Eugh_ ,” Ed says.

But he doesn’t say _What the hell are you good for?_ , and he also doesn’t stop leaning on Roy’s arm.

  


* * *

  


A few hours slip away in companionable silence-but-for-tinkering, and eventually Roy feels himself starting to slip from the familiar weariness into the half-drowsing quagmire that usually accompanies this time of night.

“All right,” Ed says, stretching extravagantly. “Good luck, Automail Princess. We’re gonna go to bed.”

She glances at the clock. “Already?”

“This one—” Ed jerks his thumb in Roy’s direction, as if it was necessary. “—actually sleeps, like a real person.”

“Am I not a real person?” Roy asks.

“Are any of us real people?” Ed asks.

“Jeez,” Winry says. “You’re right. It _is_ time. Go to bed.”

Roy’s not sure if that was deliberate on Ed’s part, or if it’s just a fortunate coincidence. He’s planning to ask when they start to settle in, but by the time that they’ve finished with the teeth-brushing and the hair-taming and stepped into Ed’s bedroom, that question disappears in light of a much more pressing observation:

“That is… still a very small bed,” Roy says. “It was barely—”

“Get fucked,” Ed says. “Or don’t. I’m tired. It’s gonna be cozy. I thought you liked that.”

“I do,” Roy says. “What I don’t like is the possibility of me rolling over in the middle of the night and pushing you onto the floor. I can’t believe we avoided that the first time, actua—”

“Try it,” Ed says. “See what happens.” Despite the characteristic aggression, he’s grinning, so Roy supposes that that’s something. “Look, just get in. If for _some_ reason, it’s not big enough this time, we’ll go steal Al’s bed, and Winry can sleep on the couch.”

“We cannot,” Roy says, “under _any_ circumstances, ask your houseguest to sleep on—”

“I knew you were going to say that,” Ed says. “So get in the damn bed already.”

Roy gives him a long, slow-simmering baleful look and then obeys.

The bed seems… marginally bigger this time, once they’ve climbed into it. Roy has to bite his tongue on a comment about there being one upside to Ed’s reduced quantity of limbs—he can tell by the taste of the words in his mouth that they would come out wrong.

Distracted as he is by a few attempts to figure out if there is, in fact, _any_ way to say such a thing that wouldn’t be disastrous, it doesn’t occur to him until Ed’s already lying beside him and tugging one-handed at the covers that Ed sent him in first, deliberately, again—that Ed, this time without asking and without ever offering a chance for protest, directed him to the side of the bed further from the door.

It had always amused him when people thought that Ed was all scorn and spite and volcanic anger—when people thought that the rage was the defining element of him. That’s always been a smokescreen. It’s always been bravado, blindingly bright and deafeningly loud on purpose to conceal how soft Ed’s heart is underneath. Ed bleeds kindness. He breathes compassion. He doesn’t even seem to notice his own generosity most of the time, because he genuinely seeks nothing in return. It’s more than just an instinct—instincts drive actions, and Ed’s gold-heartedness is more than actions, or instances, or iterations. It’s who he is. It is fundamental. It is a _fact_.

Roy supposes that his perspective is a bit unfair, when his introduction was the other way around than most. He saw the brokenness first, and then the defiance—the open wounds before the scars, long before the steel. He knew where Ed was starting from, and he could guess at what that uphill battle was liable to teach.

And he saw Ed’s lifelines. He knew what was at stake. He knew what mattered to Ed, and what motivated all the reckless choices way back then.

Which is why he needs to get this out of the way, because if they are going to try this, _honestly_ , with the hope of maintaining something healthy for a substantial quantity of time—

No matter how much both or either of them want to make it work, one thing could still destroy this, effortlessly.

Or one person, really.

Ed stretches up, twisting at what looks like a contorted angle to turn out the light, and then he settles down and folds his solitary arm to lay his hand in the center of his chest.

“You’ve got your worried face on,” Ed says.

“I don’t have a worried face,” Roy says, “because I don’t _worry_.”

“Bullshit,” Ed says.

“I strategize,” Roy says. “Extensively. I make contingency plans. Occasionally I indulge the tiniest amount of tactical… fretting.”

Ed waits until Roy has succumbed to the overtures of the wince before he repeats, agonizingly slowly: “‘Tactical fretting’.”

“It’s a technical term,” Roy says. He sniffs for good measure. “It has a dignified military history.”

“Like goddamn _hell_ it does,” Ed says, but there’s a trace of sheer delight in it. “So what are you tactically fretting about?”

“I will confess to a touch of concern,” Roy says, “about what torments to expect at Alphonse’s capable hands the next time that he’s in town.”

“Don’t bother,” Ed says. “He’s not gonna _hurt_ you. Winry’s just being super dramatic to make sure you’re serious.” Roy suspects a seed of jealousy, too, beneath the flowering histrionics, but somehow he doesn’t imagine that Ed could conceptualize the idea of two people wanting him at once. “Honestly, he’s probably gonna be happy about it.”

That… reorients the world a little bit. Roy thinks that he likes the newer balance better, but it would be preemptive to sink into relief at the first sign of safety. “Oh?”

“Yeah,” Ed says. “I mean—he’s just like that, for starters. All cutesy and romantic and stuff. And he knows you better than she does. And he saw how fucked up I got over—y’know. Her. That. The whole… situation. And some others. So he’ll probably be glad. I mean… you… meet me halfway. And you really listen to me. And you treat me like I’m special, even with the stupid little stuff that doesn’t matter. And you make me laugh a lot. And… _I’m_ happy, so… Al’ll probably be happy, too.”

Roy—

Reaches for words. Reaches for breath. Reaches for anything to say, anything to work with, anything at _all_ —

There is nothing.

There is nothing but the throb of his heartbeat, warm and so fast that it feels frantic—as if he’s terrified; as if his life’s in danger; as if he’s falling, even though he knows that that’s a foregone fact by now.

But it’s not like that.

There’s no fear. No fury. No dread; no desperation; no hollow, stone-cold misery, seeping through his bones.

Just Ed—Ed, burning almost too bright to lay eyes on. Just Ed stoking a bonfire in the center of his chest.

The reason that Roy couldn’t find words for this is because there aren’t any. Words aren’t big enough. They aren’t sufficient.

It’s easier, at least, in a tiny bed that barely fits the two of them, to wrap both arms around Ed and hold on so tight that it might just press some of the magnitude of what Roy’s feeling straight into Ed’s skin.

Ed half-laughs, softly—and Roy started to tense at the indrawn breath alone, but there isn’t a trace of malice or dismissal in it. Nothing cruel. Nothing dissatisfied.

Ed’s hand grazes up over Roy’s shoulder-blade and then works itself into his hair.

“Shit,” Ed says. “I thought you might get sappy, but—”

“Get bent, beautiful,” Roy manages to mumble into his collarbone.

Ed laughs again, and it’s much more than half this time. “You first,” he says.

  


* * *

  


Coaxing himself to the edge of sleep and letting himself tip over takes as much time and concentrated effort as Roy had expected it to, although not quite as much as he’d feared. He’ll take that. He imagines that Ed will let him laze around the bed—such as it is—for several hours tomorrow morning to make up the deficit regardless; he imagines that the softly-breathing gift of a man beside him will show him every ounce of the mercy that made the Fullmetal Alchemist famous once.

That’s a comforting thought to wrap himself in as Roy grapples as quietly as he can with the hissing demons, trying to silence them without raising his own heart-rate any higher; without jeopardizing any of the peace.

It’ll be fine. He can take his time. Ed is so close beside him that Roy can feel the bedclothes rising and falling with every precious breath. This is a good place to be, even if it’s far from perfect. This is good.

He eases his eyes closed; relaxes his muscles deliberately, one at a time; tries to focus on the dark of the backs of his eyelids until it envelops him.

This is good.

  


* * *

  


Less good is the scrabbling, scratching noise that makes him sit bolt upright fewer hours later than he would have liked.

A pale sweep of light suffuses the room—well past dawn, then, but it feels sticky on his skin, and his mouth is dry, and his heart’s already racing—

Two tiny white paws appear, disappear, and reappear in the crack beneath the bedroom door, accompanied by a renewed bout of the sound that woke him. It appears to be the cat’s claws catching in the carpet.

“Fuck,” Ed says, so blearily that the very familiar syllable is barely recognizable. “Sorry. They do that. Now do you understand why I hate ’em so much?”

“They’re probably just lonely,” Roy manages.

“Or evil,” Ed says.

Roy tries to fit himself back into the bed without impinging too much on Ed’s sprawl. “Perhaps a bit of both.”

Ed wriggles in a way that looks aimless until he succeeds in rolling onto his side to face Roy. His eyes are only open a sliver, and his hair is a matted mess, and there’s a tiny spot at the corner of his mouth of something white and flaky that Roy suspects is dried saliva.

Roy would burn worlds for him. Roy would level cities and scorch a hundred-thousand, a hundred- _million_ miles.

“You should go back to sleep,” Ed says. “Winry’s gonna be crashed out for a couple more hours, and you probably need it.”

Roy reaches out—not very far, of course, given that there is a grand total of about an inch to spare between them—and grazes his knuckles across Ed’s cheek. Ed’s eyelashes flutter. Roy could die satisfied right this second, sleep-deprived or not.

“I think you need it more than I do,” he says.

Ed smiles faintly. “I think arguin’ about who needs it more is cutting into the sleep time.”

Roy leans forward—not very far, of course—and kisses the bridge of his nose. “I think you’re right.”

“Barf,” Ed says.

“Barf indeed,” Roy says.

Even the slight shift brought them close enough that it’s easy to slip his uninjured arm around Ed’s waist, which makes it easy to run his hand lightly up and down Ed’s back.

Ed leans in, head coming to rest against Roy’s chest. In another minute, Roy may just coax him into purring, whatever complaints Ed might have about the cat comparison.

He slows the progress of his palm, trying to make it more soothing—for both of them, really, although the shot of adrenaline from the recent incursion may have sealed Roy’s fate as far as the sleep is concerned.

Ed breathes out slowly, and the damp heat of it ghosts across Roy’s collarbones. “Why’re you doin’ that?”

“I’m sorry,” Roy says, keeping his voice low. “Is it distracting?”

“No,” Ed says. “S’nice. Just… I’ve only got two and about a quarter limbs right now. S’weird.”

Roy goes still despite himself. He didn’t mean to react so obviously; it’s possible that Ed’s too tangled in the first threads of the next dream to notice, but—

“It’s not weird,” Roy says. “It’s _you_. You make the automail very much a part of yourself, yes, and you use it like no one the world has ever seen, but—this is… you. This is something you did, something you are, something… inherent. Undeniable.” He swallows, hesitates—he’s already gone too far, most likely, so it can’t hurt too much to go further. “I don’t want to deny it. I want you the way you are. All of you; the most of you; the least of you; the truth of you. However many limbs that is at any given time.”

Ed stays silent long enough that Roy thinks that he must have crossed a boundary—set it ablaze, more likely; burned down the fence and danced among the ashes. Stupid of him. His guard was down; he has to remember to tread so damn cautiously where Ed’s feelings—

“Shut up,” Ed says, and his voice is—thick. Heavy with held-back tears. This close, he’ll be able to hear exactly what that does to Roy’s heartbeat. “You—just—shut up. Can’t just—say shit like that. Outta nowhere. When I’m not even _awake_.” He buries his face in Roy’s T-shirt, curling the fingers of his left hand into the fabric until he’s got a whole fistful of it captive. “Asshole. Fuck. I—you, too. I want—all of it. Even the worst shit. Okay? If you’re gonna get all of me, then you have to let me in. Always. No matter how bad it gets.”

Roy attempts to find a breath of air somewhere in the room that might revive his brain.

“I can’t promise always,” he says. “I’m… I don’t even know where some of the walls are. They’re old, and they’re tall, and—but—between the two of us, I think…”

Ed snorts without lifting his head a centimeter. “Who the hell are you callin’ so small he can’t blast the fuck out of your crusty-ass defense mechanisms?”

“Someone other than you,” Roy says, dragging his hand through the expanses of hair streaming across the pillow. “Obviously.”

Ed drags a shuddering breath in and manages to make the exhale sound a little like a laugh. “ _Obviously_.”

  


* * *

  


Roy discovers several new things over the course of the rest of the day. He discovers that Ed’s showerhead is tilted down so that the spray is angled very low, which forces him to smother a laugh in the crook of his elbow for fear that he’ll be heard and summarily annihilated. He discovers that a wildly self-destructive love of all-nighters runs in the extended family. He discovers that Winry can put away as much food, with comparable terrifying speed, as Ed can, or at least when she’s been working for too long.

Roy also discovers that reattaching the automail arm is an experience so unimaginably painful that it actually registers on Ed’s extraordinarily skewed scale of physical discomfort—and registers _high_. It registers high enough, in fact, that Ed grips the couch arm hard until his knuckles crack; high enough that the cords stand out in his neck, and the _sound_ that escapes him—

High enough that Roy really never had a choice: the instant that his mortified body unfreezes, he’s at Ed’s side, hands flitting over him helplessly, stroking back his hair, touching his face, knitting their fingers together to squeeze his left hand.

“It’s fine,” Ed says, completely breathless, with an unconvincing attempt at a smile. “That one’s worse than the leg.”

“No, it’s not,” Winry says calmly.

“Shut up,” Ed says.

Roy grips his hand a little harder. “You don’t happen to have any vodka lying around, do you?”

Ed musters a wink. “For you or for me?”

“Both,” Roy says.

“It’s fine,” Ed says.

Roy looks at him.

Ed smiles, marginally more strongly this time.

“Some shit you just gotta get through,” Ed says. “Besides.” He tugs on their joined hands. “It’s easier with a little bit of help.”

Roy’s not sure that he believes that, but he doesn’t seem to have too many options.

He discovers more, as the day goes on: that Winry’s work on lunch is just as respectable as her obliteration of breakfast; that the extent of Ed’s ability to commentate on a vast variety of shiny satin dresses for sale in Central’s boutiques is “You look good in _everything_ ; just _buy_ one”; and that “Al is so much better at this than you, you total dweeb”.

Roy also discovers that nothing more or less than the words “My vote is for the powder blue one—it brings out your eyes more than the others, and the lines are especially flattering on you” subtly but unmistakably changes the way that Winry Rockbell looks at him.

They’ve all earned a coffee break after what Roy calls an experience, which Ed calls an ordeal.

“What,” Ed says, “is _that_?”

Winry waves her cup under his nose, somehow managing not to slosh any foam over the side. “It’s a latte, dummy.”

“I repeat,” Ed says. “ _What_ is—”

“It’s espresso and steamed milk,” Winry says.

“It’s an abomination,” Ed says. “Why would you taint—”

“ _You’re_ an abomination,” Winry says.

“Sure,” Ed says. “But at least I’m not the kind with scalded milk in it.”

“It’s not the latte’s fault that you’re uncultured,” Winry says. “And _picky_.”

“Ed,” Roy cuts in, “would you like a cookie?”

Ed eyes him. “Are you trying to pacify me with sugar?”

“Depends,” Roy says. “What do you think are the odds that it’ll work?”

“Low,” Ed says, rather disdainfully. “But it’s probably the only plan you’ve got, so maybe you should try it anyway.”

“That’s very practical advice,” Roy says.

“I know,” Ed says. “Practicality is my calling card.”

“Chocolate chip or snickerdoodle?” Roy asks.

“Second one,” Ed says. “Just so that I get to make you say that three more times.”

“Snickerdoodle, snickerdoodle, snickerdoodle,” Roy says. “Now we’ve summoned a diabetic demon.”

Ed’s laughter carries him all the way to the counter, and he’s starting to think—

That perhaps he can actually do this. If he has that behind him, perhaps he really can.

  


* * *

  


The discoveries continue that night, when they find a cabaret that suits Winry’s liking: apparently she wants one that’s loud and dim and crowded, with a wide dance floor and a well-stocked bar.

Roy supposes that he should just count it as a blessing that she didn’t pick his mother’s. Another boon—they manage to snag a booth table in the corner, where the acoustics almost allow one to hear oneself think. Roy knows that he needs to try to focus on those things, rather than on the way that his heart keeps attempting to climb with hooks and grapples up the back of his throat.

As soon as they’re settled, Ed grabs his hand beneath the table and squeezes tight. The questioning look is just that—inquisitive, but not accusatory. There’s a touch of concern in it.

“Nice place,” Roy says, more to reassure Ed than because he means it.

“It’s got people in it,” Winry says. “I’ll take it.”

“How do you know that they’re quality people?” Ed asks.

“I don’t care,” Winry says. “Are you gonna get up and make sure that your leg’s aligned properly, or what?”

“I’ll get the drinks,” Ed says. “I am _not_ gonna dance.”

“You’re such a party-pooper,” Winry says.

Ed scoots off of the bench seat and stands. The moment’s hesitation as he braces himself, repositions his body, and then shifts his weight onto both feet evenly to push himself upright is so brief that Roy almost misses it altogether. “Yeah, well, you drink coffee that defies the essence of coffee. I’ll take my chances. The usual?”

“Yup,” Winry says. “Thanks.”

Roy considers her. She went with the dress that he recommended. He was not exaggerating its effect at the time, and he has not failed to notice the looks that she’s garnered for it since the moment that they walked in. “What’s the usual?” he asks.

“I have no idea,” Winry says, grinning as she looks over the dance floor. “I just want to see what he thinks it is.”

“That’s fair,” Roy says.

She turns to him, immediately focused again. “So. How’d you sleep?”

For a breath-stopping moment, Roy thinks that she _knows_ —knows everything. Knows his weakness; knows the risks; knows the depths of the shame and the wretchedness and the despair—

Then he realizes that she’s talking about Ed. More specifically, most likely, she’s talking about the size of Ed’s bed.

He clears his throat. “Better… than I expected.”

“Shit,” she says, which is… startling, to say the least. To someone who relies on observation the way that Roy does, the fingernails give her occupation away long before she would ever have the chance to speak, but he imagines that she’s sent a citizen or two to the brink of cardiac arrest with the lethal combination of a winsome smile and a practiced curse. “Should’ve intimidated you better. I’m not doing my job. Al’s gonna be so disappointed.”

“You could try recruiting Riza in the meantime,” Roy says. “She’s often very eager to inform me that I would be better off leaving my life choices to a four-year-old child with a coin to flip for big decisions.”

The next smile curves slow and merciless. “That is a _very_ good suggestion, General.”

Self-sabotage has always been his specialty.

But what Winry doesn’t realize is that Riza takes no pleasure in kicking him when he’s already bleeding on the ground. That’s probably why she couldn’t help him this time—beyond the prominent fact that he wouldn’t let her, that is; because if he did, he wasn’t sure that he could ever let her go.

Ed was different. Ed saw where Roy could take a few more knives and went right for the weak spots to force him to fight back.

Winry might have guessed as much, having known Ed for as long as she has, but she won’t know the rest of it, so Roy says only, “I try.”

She tilts her head towards the bar. “How has he been, though? Not—particular to—this, I mean. Just… generally. How’s he been holding up since Al left?”

“Ah,” Roy says. It’s the sagest-sounding interjection that he’s yet found when one needs to stall for time. “He and I… weren’t especially close during the worst of it. Not until relatively recently, really, and I think the edge had worn off by then. But I suspect that it’s been a struggle, and the type of struggle that he thinks shouldn’t be one, so he buries all the evidence as deep as possible in the hopes that no one else will notice that it exists.”

Winry grimaces. “Sounds about right.”

Ed, because he is Ed, has made a black shirt, black slacks, and a red tie utterly unmissable in a crowded room. Roy’s eye finds him before he’s made it halfway back to their table.

Ed sets two glasses down firmly—one of which contains a lot of orange; one of which contains a lot of amber.

“Okay,” Winry says, taking the orange item offered and swirling the straw around within it. “What is this?”

Ed freezes halfway to sliding onto the bench seat, staring at her. “It’s your drink.”

“I got that part,” Winry says. “What kind of drink is it?”

“ _Your_ drink,” Ed says, frowning. “It’s a screwdriver.”

Winry is the one staring now, because Ed has rolled his eyes and started scotting over onto the cushion next to Roy.

Which leaves one item unexplained, of course.

“I, um,” Ed says. He pulls the other glass closer to him. “They had a cider on tap that the guy said was good, and… I figured since—y’know—you’re driving, and I’m not really jonesing to fall on my face right after I got my extremities back, that… maybe we could… split it. If you want.”

Roy would very much appreciate it if his heart would stop trying to ram itself through his vulnerable ribs. “I would love to.”

“Not until I’m done with you,” Winry says, seizing Roy’s arm and hauling hard enough that he fears for his ligaments. He scrambles to follow—with as much dignity as possible, of course—before she can wreak any damage that feels permanent. “I wanna get one dance in first so I don’t get dizzy. C’mon.”

“Go easy on him,” Ed calls, although by the smirk he doesn’t really seem to mean it.

“Are you all right?” Roy asks as Winry tows him towards the swirling bodies on the floor. He fights to keep his heart steady, fights to keep his head; smothers the voices drawing breath to scream at the claustrophobic crush of unknown people—

“Yeah,” she says, though the touch of pink in her cheeks tells a slightly different story. “Just—I know it’s—” She takes a deep breath, tosses her hair over her shoulder, and looks intently over at the band. “Just that it’s hard when he does stuff like that. Every now and again, when I expect it the least, he does something so damn cute that I can’t _stand_ it.”

Roy sympathizes, and opens his mouth to say so.

“Anyway!” Winry says, brightly, before he can get a word out. “That’s the other thing.” She beams at him. “If you hurt him, I swear to all that’s sacred in the universe that I will make you regret every last second of your life since the one where you were born.”

Her intentions are so good that he really doesn’t have the heart to tell her that she’s quite a lot too late for that.

He has a few, though, doesn’t he? A few moments that he categorically does not regret. A few moments that were so thoroughly and genuinely good that he wouldn’t trade them back for anything. A few that were _right_.

That’s something.

That’s a lot.

“I’ll keep that in mind,” he says.

“Good,” she says. She holds her right hand out to him, swishing her skirt with the left, and this grin is much less terrifying and much more playful than the last. “You gonna impress me, or what?”

  


* * *

  


Time was, Roy had more than one dance in him. Time was, the brassy jubilation of the music and the tornado of deftly-stepping, swiftly-twirling bodies would have made his heart sing instead of racing—would have left him grinning rather than setting his teeth on edge. Time was, the things that he loved didn’t have the power to drown him the instant that he’d had too much.

That time is past him. It’s gone. Clinging to the last wisps of its memory won’t bring it back.

Besides, the time that he has now comes with a number of its own advantages. One of them is sliding back onto the seat next to Ed, reaching over to sweep his hair back from his face just for the sheer glory of it, and feeling a hand settle—less than certainly, but Ed’s expression betrays no remorse—on his knee in recompense.

Winry is still out on the floor, knocking bystanders dead with every single twist of her hips.

“I really hope she finds somebody,” Ed says, watching her. “Or—maybe not even somebody. It doesn’t have to be a person. I hope she finds some _thing_. Something that makes her feel like she did it, and it’s worth it, and shit makes sense.”

Roy looks at him.

Ed looks back, and then the look darkens into a glower. “What?”

“Nothing,” Roy says.

“Bullshit,” Ed says. He pushes the pint glass of cider—which contains somewhat less than a pint by now—over in front of Roy. “And for the record, you make _no_ sense.”

“That’s fair,” Roy says.

“Nothing’s fair,” Ed says, fumbling under the table until he finds Roy’s right hand with his left, at which point he tangles their fingers together, and Roy can feel his heartbeat through his skin. “But sometimes it’s decent anyway.”

  


* * *

  


Unsurprisingly, Winry crashes out on the drive home. Surprisingly, she snores loudly enough to wake the dead. Half-surprisingly and half-not, Roy’s a bit grateful for it, since it keeps his nerves piqued, which counteracts the tiny flicker of a buzz that he gleaned off of a substantial portion of Ed’s cider.

“Hey, Win,” Ed says when they park. “I broke it again.”

She startles awake so violently that Roy can’t help but be impressed. “You— _Ed_ , you absolute _idiot_ —”

“Kidding,” he says. “We’re here.”

She blinks, glances around herself, flings the door open, and jumps out before Roy can even consider that he should be getting up to help her in a gentlemanly sort of way. “You should know better than to joke about that, you jerk.”

Ed’s grin gleams in the dim light. “Worked, didn’t it?”

“That’s been your excuse for wrecking things since you were twelve,” she says.

“Give me some credit,” he says, climbing out after her. “At least since I was ten.”

Roy locks the car and follows the pair of bickering blonds up the walk to the apartment complex, and from there, once again, it’s all much too easy.

After seeing Winry safely to her long-awaited slumber, nearly tripping over a cat each on the way back from the bathroom, and settling in bed, the question that Roy has been swallowing down for several hours surfaces again, and he thinks that now might be time to voice it.

He draws a deep breath first just in case.

“Why did you share your drink with me?” he asks.

Ed was reaching for the lamp—he pauses there, steel arm extended and gleaming in the light. “I told you. I didn’t want to have it all by myself and then fall in a gutter and put a bunch of scratches on the stuff that she just fixed.”

“That rationale I follow,” Roy says, watching him. “But why offer it to me when you’ve spent nearly a month trying to keep me away from alcohol?”

Ed settles back on the pillow, meeting Roy’s eyes so intently that the back of Roy’s neck prickles.

“Because I knew that I could now,” Ed says. “I knew that you could have a little bit and then put it aside. I knew that you could stop yourself, and it wasn’t going to start some kind of an avalanche, and you weren’t going to relapse or whatever. I know that you’re there now. It doesn’t have to be a crutch anymore. You’re in control of it, not the other way around. And I figured that that sort of needed… I dunno. Acknowledgement. Celebration, maybe.”

“And a scientific test of your theory,” Roy says.

“Well, duh,” Ed says.

Roy looks back, although with rather less searing genius.

“Thank you,” he says.

“Whatever,” Ed says, wrinkling his nose up adorably. “You’re the one who did it. I just sort of helped a little bit and then noticed what you’d done.”

“My turn,” Roy says.

Ed’s eyebrow arches. “For—”

“To call bullshit,” Roy says.

Ed grins.

Then the grin fades, and he goes back to the intense-staring thing, and Roy’s heart wobbles in a way that he doesn’t like.

It isn’t that he doesn’t trust Ed to the ends of his wits and the ends of the planet, obviously. It’s just that he never quite knows how far towards those boundaries he’ll have to go, and the anticipation sometimes wears him very, very thin.

Ed sits up—with a bit of difficulty, but he’s balanced himself before Roy can reach out and try to support his back—and opens the drawer of the nightstand. He reaches in, rummages, and draws out—

The flask. Roy’s flask. The gleaming silver hostage that he had almost managed to convince himself that he’d forgotten.

Ed holds it up, just out of reach. “Do you want this back?”

Maes gave it to him—for their one-year anniversary, which turned out to be the only one that they ever had. Maes had had it custom-engraved with a stylized nonsense-design that he’d caught Roy doodling, of their first initials tangled up together.

Roy wants the object back, yes. He wants to be able to run the pad of his thumb across the grooves and batten down the heartbreak all over again. He wants to be able to hold it tight in both hands and pretend that he can feel the warmth of Maes’s fingers for a second when he lets it go.

But he remembers the deal—the bargain. He remembers the exchange.

If he takes back the flask, he has to see a shrink.

He has to let a stranger into this.

Is it worth it?

Is what he’s built here, in the unexpected interim, worth risking all the rest? He’s already come inconceivably far—inconceivable, at least, compared to what he could have done alone. Is it even possible to keep moving onward and up from here? Is there even anything left to gain?

Ed quirks an eyebrow. “If you break the windows in my apartment thinking that loud, Mustang,” he says, “you’re gonna be paying my deposit. Do you want it, or not?”

Heedless ambition has always been Roy’s greatest fault. Maes loved him for that, once.

Perhaps there’s one more leap of faith left in him.

“Yes,” Roy says. “I do.”

There’s a fraction of a second where Ed looks relieved and elated in nearly equal measure, and then he forces every trace of it off of his face and feigns something much more akin to calm neutrality. It’s rather cute, entirely because they both know that Ed’s never felt neutral about anything in his life.

Ed sets the flask down firmly on top of the nightstand, reaches across the bed to pin Roy in place by the uninjured shoulder, and leans down to kiss his forehead.

It’s just a graze of lips on skin—skin which has, as it happens, long since been desensitized by the amount of frowning that Roy’s work requires—and yet it is _so_ much more, given how precious few gestures like it Ed has initiated so far. It feels generous and promising on top of being radiantly sweet.

“Good,” Ed says, and then he shifts over, stretches up again, and turns out the light.

  


* * *

  


***

  


* * *

  


There’s something different about the brightness of a winter afternoon—Roy thinks that it’s the fact that the air always seems to hang on the verge of crystallizing, and the sunlight fractures as it filters through. The first inklings of sunset paint the whole world rose-gold.

He will say that, unreservedly, for this place: its location, just outside the city center, where the gaps between the buildings widen enough for you to breathe, and there’s space for trees and bigger windows and little lines of flowers along the sidewalk, is a pleasant one. It is a decent place to be.

The profusion of nearby coffee shops is also a plus. He hopes that the nearest one charges at the counter, because once Ed—who is sprawled in a cutesy wrought-iron chair at one of their street-side tables—looks up, he definitively does not pay a bill before slugging the rest of his coffee and vaulting over the railing.

“Hey!” he calls, not even pretending to look both ways before he jogs across the street, because he knows that Roy’s doing it for him. “How’d it go?”

“I should be asking you that question,” Roy says. “I’m sorry that I had to miss it.”

Ed jumps up onto the curb to join him, somehow managing to shrug at the same time. “Wasn’t much to miss. This one was all indoors, and there was a lot of staring at petri dishes. Definitely the most boring exam I’ve ever done. Committee was real impressed and shit, though, so I’m pretty sure I passed.”

Roy smiles in spite of himself—or perhaps in spite of everything except himself. “Then I suppose the State Alchemy program lives to ensnare innocent young hopefuls another day.”

“Neither of us was ever innocent,” Ed says. “Where’s the car?”

“This way,” Roy says, going to the trouble of a completely unnecessary gesture before he starts off in the right direction. “Did you walk all the way here?”

“As opposed to what?” Ed asks, smirking at him. “Hitching a ride on a couple of pigeons strapped together?”

Roy can’t help that he smiles back at the mental image alone. “Perhaps you could recruit some crows.”

“Yeah, right,” Ed says. “Crows are too smart for that crap.” He elbows Roy’s forearm, meaningfully. “So—second time’s the charm. How’d it go?”

It’s been less than ten minutes since Roy stepped out of the room and gently closed the door behind him. He hasn’t had a chance to sort his way through the muddle yet—hasn’t had time to extract anything like an overall impression from the maelstrom of mixed feelings.

“I’m not sure,” he says. Ed won’t hold it against him. “I… think it was all right. It’s unspeakably strange trying to summarize the entire trajectory of your life for a total stranger inside of an hour, and trying to make sure to mention the parts that you think are most thematically significant. She’s… very smart. I suppose that I’m optimistic about that much. But the introduction is one thing; the rest of it will be the real test. I’m not sure that she’ll want to commit to it for the long haul.”

“Maybe,” Ed says. “Maybe not. Knox said that he’s been going to her for a year and a half now, and he’s got some pretty big skeletons in the closet, too.” At Roy’s startled expression, he—predictably—grins. “That’s where I got the recommendation. I asked him ’cause I figured maybe he’d happen to know somebody, but he did me one better. You gave me the idea, actually. When you mentioned that that one book I was reading was from Marcoh, it made a little light go on in my brain.”

“Well,” Roy says. He’s starting to recognize this particular variety of freewheeling, discombobulated helplessness as a symptom of Ed, which means that he’s almost beginning to enjoy it. “Perhaps that’s a good sign, then. At the very least, it bodes well for her putting up with me. I’m much less intense than he is.”

Ed sidles a step closer, catches Roy’s swinging hand, and seizes it with his. His fingers are freezing. How long was he sitting outside to wait? The instant that they reach the car, Roy’s going to mummify that hand in his scarf and force Ed to hold it in front of the heating vent until this is remedied.

For now, though, he lets himself revel just a little in how tightly Ed clutches his hand.

“Plus you’re cuter,” Ed says casually.

“Are you sure?” Roy asks. “I think I’m headed rather clearly in that direction—old, grizzled, graying, the glasses, my inability to stop greeting people with the word ‘dumbass’—”

“Yeah,” Ed says, fighting down a snicker. “That’s definitely you.”

Roy tries not to gaze at him soppily enough to emit noticeable volumes of sap from any of his pores. “Thank you.”

Ed gives him a sardonic look. “For thinking that you’re cuter than Doctor Knox?”

“For all of it,” Roy says.

Ed grimaces. “Yeah. I figured. That was a joke. Y’know, to lighten the mood so you don’t get all weird on me? Ringing any bells?”

“Several, and loudly,” Roy says. “I just take such joy in ruining your fun.”

“Asshole,” Ed says, adoringly.

“Your asshole,” Roy says. “Which I believe makes you a masochist.”

“I think I can live with that,” Ed says. He pauses. “You’re—doing okay, though? I hear the whole catharsis thing can really wear you out.”

“So far, so good,” Roy says. “I’m… a strange part of me is looking forward to it.”

“All the parts of you are strange,” Ed says. “But—y’know. Good. I guess we’ll see how it goes, huh?”

Roy squeezes Ed’s hand. Ed squeezes back, and grins up at him, and this—

This feels… right.

Roy smiles as the fading sunlight sparks on Ed’s hair, and the cold air cinches in around them.

“I guess we will,” he says.


End file.
